Balanced use of fertilizer nutrients and its determinants: a case of cotton crop

Although fertilizer use has substantially increased overtime in Pakistan, its application is highly imbalanced resulting in wastage of scarce resources and additional cost to farmers and economy as well because fertilizer industry is among major consumers of natural gas in Pakistan. Nitrogenous fertilizers are commonly used in cotton production compared to other fertilizer nutrients. Sine, production of nitrogenous fertilizers involves natural resources, namely natural gas, its indiscriminate use leads to demand for more of natural gas. Pakistan is facing severe supply problems of oil and gas resources, so society suffers from external cost due to allocation of natural resources to fertilizer production. The need is to explore reasons for imbalanced use of fertilizer nutrients so policies may be made accordingly.The present study was designed to estimate the determinants of imbalanced use of fertilizer nutrients in Pakistani PunjabRespondents growing cotton crop were randomly selected for the present study. Farmers were grouped into two categories, those using balanced amount and those using imbalanced amounts. So, it is necessary to estimate factors causing this type of beahviour among farmers. As the dependent variable is binary, Logit model was employed to estimate factors having impact on imbalanced use of fertilizer nutrients.Results indicated that social networks, access to information and institutions, availability of financial resources augmented by off-farm income were significantly related with balanced use of fertilizer nutrients. Age, farming experience and primary education also affected the selection of nutrients. Thus, strengthening institutions, increasing access to information and capacity building of farmers may lead towards the optimum and balanced use of fertilizer nutrients in the study area, giving sustainable cotton production.