Chemical Fertilizer vs. Organic Fertilizers

Fertilizers are the protein supplements for your plants. Fertilizers are used to enrich the soil with nutrients that it does not inherently have. Fertilizers should be used strictly as a deficiency-buster. Inordinate use of different types of fertilizers kills the naturally present ingredients in soil too. So, it is important to use them carefully and only as per need.

What is an Organic Fertilizer?
Organic fertilizers are made from naturally occurring substances, and include by-products or waste remains of the animals. Dead plants and dead animal remains are also often used as fertilizers in organic farming. They are naturally chemical-rich and contain high amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK).

What is a Chemical Fertilizer?
The main difference between a chemical fertilizer and an organic fertilizer is that the chemical ones come out of a lab and the organic one comes from living beings. A chemical fertilizer is synthetically prepared to include the vital nutrients that are necessary for the plant growth process. All chemical fertilizers contain the normal NPK requirement and any other nutrients as required.

Chemical Fertilizer vs Organic Fertilizer

What are the benefits of Organic Fertilizers?
Production:Chemical fertilizers are man-made and organic fertilizers are made by natural processes.

Effect on Biological Activity:Chemical fertilizers kill the microorganisms in the soil. It is one of the advantages of organic fertilizers that they boost microbial activity in the soil. These microbes help in degenerating the complex compounds present in the organic fertilizers.

Effect on Soil:Overuse of fertilizers is often a problem as excess nutrients are neither good for the overall composition of soil nor are they good for the plant. Organic fertilizers may also have a problem of overuse, but it is a slow nutrient releasing material, so the nutrients will anyway take some time to get absorbed.

Effect on Environment: It is one of the greatest advantages of organic fertilizers that they are easily available in nature, in plenty and with almost no adverse effect on the environment. Chemical fertilizers on the other hand might have the problem of nitrogen components seeping into groundwater streams or otherwise into the nearest lake or river and causing pollution.

Price: Organic fertilizers are much cheaper compared to their chemical counterparts as they are easily available in nature and only require packaging. Chemical fertilizers need extensive research and production work making them much more expensive.

What are the Benefits of Chemical Fertilizers?
Composition: One of the benefits of chemical fertilizers is that it is custom-made for your requirement. Now if your soil is rich in nitrogen and potassium, what you need is a fertilizer that will take care of the phosphorus deficiency. Chemical fertilizers will give you the option of using phosphorus-rich fertilizers.

Fertility: While organic fertilizers have a low NPK ratio, the chemical ones enjoy a very high ratio of the same. So if you have a very unproductive soil, chemical fertilizers are what you need as they have an NPK ratio of nearly 60% while the most fertile of organic fertilizers can give only about 14%.

Release time: Organic fertilizers may take more time to release the nutrients as they need some microbial activity to get them working. Chemical fertilizers get cracking instantly and release the essential nutrients into the soil.

Thus we now know the advantages and disadvantages of organic fertilizers and chemical fertilizers. This will help us solve the old chemical fertilizer vs. organic fertilizer dilemma once and for all.