Abstract

Alemu wegu* and Israel Zewdie

To feed the human population adding fertilizers to crops is needed to producing enough food. Provide fertilizers for crops with nutrients like potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen, which allow crops to grow bigger, faster, and to produce more food. To grow, plants require nitrogen compounds from the soil, which can be produced naturally or be provided by fertilizers. Agriculture is the backbone of the Ethiopian economy, and the agricultural sector is dominated by smallholder farming systems. The farming systems are facing constraints such as small land size, lack of resources, and increasing degradation of soil quality that hamper sustainable crop production and food security. This review overview the constraints of Farmer’s access to fertilizer, fertilizer marketing systems, and suggest modification of existing fertilizer policies to mitigate the constraints. Adoption of integrated soil fertility management, practices by smallholder farmers is often limited, mainly due to shortage of cropland, lack of adequate knowledge about appropriate fertilizer use, land tenure issues, slow return on investments, and insufficient policy and implementation schemes. The events should include the utilization of degraded and marginal lands, improvement of the soil organic matter management, provision of capacity-building opportunities and financial support, as well as the development of specific policies for smallholder farming to increase fertilizer use and to increase crop yields.