Agricultural work this spring has already begun / day

Export of agricultural products is one of the most important sources of income in our country. In addition, Latvia’s ability to provide citizens with their own grown crop and livestock production is the basis for national security in critical situations. This year’s spring came early. One of the first rural processing work is the incorporation of fertilizers to the top of the soil, and this year it was started in many places at the end of March.

Latvia is one of the largest exports of crop products in the world, if one population is expected, and it is logical that Latvia should be in the first place in the world according to imports of mineral fertilizers. That’s it.

International Trade Center International Trade Center (ITC) The statistics compiled that, in the year 2023, per capita, ammonium nitrate and calcium carbonate mixture mineral fertilizers were Latvia’s largest importer in the world (26.6 euros per capita).

It should be noted that the UN Trade and Development Agency, the European Union and the World Trade Organization are supported by the ITC. Latvia does not have its own mineral fertilizer industry.

A substance with dual application

Chemically purified ammonium nitrate is a dual application. It can be used in both mineral fertilizers and explosives (ammonal) production. On August 4, 2020, a 2.75 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in the port warehouse. The explosion was 1.1 kilotonna in the trinitrotoluene equivalent, which is about one sixteenth of Hiroshima (Japan )’s nuclear explosion power at the end of World War II in August 1945. In the terrorist act, which took place in the Norwegian capital Oslo in 2011, the explosive was made of three tons of ammonium nitrate.

To prevent the use of ammonium nitrate for its unexpected purpose, stabilizers are added to the ammonium nitrate agricultural fertilizer, which prevents the explosion of ammonium nitrate by prolonged storage and thus significantly complicates its use in explosive synthesis.