The painted skin of seaweed fat should be torn off a few more.

Zhang Siping, a reporter from Southern Rural Daily.

Seaweed fertilizer, which was originally named "water-soluble fertilizer containing alginate", has been cancelled and classified as "organic water-soluble fertilizer" a few days ago. A reporter from the Southern Rural Daily learned from the National Chemical Fertilizer quality Supervision and Inspection Center that the move is related to monitoring the chaos in the production and sale of seaweed fertilizer. Seaweed fertilizer, a new type of fertilizer with the concept of ecological, organic and environmental protection, has been sought after by the market in recent years, but it can be called truly qualified seaweed fertilizer accounts for only a small part.

80% of "seaweed fertilizer" is not registered.

From May 24 to 26, a reporter from Southern Rural Daily investigated more than a dozen retail stores in Fengcun Town, Xinwei Town, Gaoliang Town, Guanwei Town, Deqing County, and found products marked "seaweed fertilizer" on sale in 8 of them, and there was more than one product labeled "seaweed fertilizer" in some stores.

The popularity of seaweed fertilizer stems from being "easy to sell" in the market. Liang, the owner of an agricultural aid shop in Fengcun Town, said that he has represented a seaweed fertilizer product, and many farmers have reported good results after using it, which is better than humic acid foliar fertilizer with the same nutrient content. Therefore, sales have also increased year by year in recent years.

In an interview with a reporter from the Southern Rural Daily, a number of local agricultural dealers revealed that after the promotion of seaweed fertilizer in recent years, farmers' awareness of it is getting higher and higher, thus becoming a best seller in the market, so in more than 400 retail stores in Deqing, at least half of them have "seaweed fertilizer" for sale.

In other parts of Guangdong Province, a reporter from the Southern Rural Daily has visited the countryside many times and found that although seaweed fertilizer is a new type of fertilizer that has only been introduced to the market in recent years, it is now everywhere in retail stores, and many of them are still in the most prominent position in the store. become the main product of foliar fertilizer in the store.

A reporter from the Southern Rural Daily also noticed that there are various forms of algae fertilizer products in Shanghai, including liquid, soluble flake, paste, gel colloid, soluble powder, slow-release fertilizer tablets, and so on. Production enterprises not only produce seaweed raw materials in Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other coastal areas, but also have no seaweed raw materials in Henan, Shaanxi and other inland areas, as well as many nominal imported products. It can be described as varied.

"this is true not only in Guangdong, but also in the national market." Wan Xuebing, technical director of Beijing Leili Agricultural Chemical Co., Ltd., said: at present, there are at least 500 products and more than 300 production enterprises marked "seaweed fertilizer" on the national agricultural market.

However, a reporter from the Southern Rural Daily found from the "announcement of Fertilizer Registration Certificate of the Ministry of Agriculture" on the official website of the National Chemical Fertilizer quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Beijing) that as of May 13, 2011, only 78 "water-soluble fertilizers containing alginate" products and 38 production enterprises had been registered with the Ministry of Agriculture. Obviously, more than 80% of the seaweed fertilizer products on the market are illegally sold without a license.

Seaweed fertilizer has become the hardest hit area of fake and shoddy products, and the most important reason is driven by high profits. According to a number of senior people in the industry, seaweed fertilizer is a veritable aristocratic fertilizer in the market, and its price is generally more than 10% more expensive than humic acid foliar fertilizer with the same nutrient content. Therefore, the profit is also relatively much higher.

Containing alginic acid is called "seaweed fertilizer"

A reporter from the Southern Rural Daily also found that not only can we see from the registration certificate that most enterprises produce illegally, but from the perspective of raw materials, the fake and shoddy seaweed fertilizer on the market also reveals the "fox's tail."

Zhang Xuecheng, vice president of the China Seaweed Industry Association, said in an interview with the Southern Rural Daily that the total annual output of seaweed in China is about 1.5 million tons, more than 80 percent of which are artificially farmed. It is mainly used in seaweed food, algal gum food additives and auxiliaries, seaweed health products, cosmetics, bioenergy and agricultural inputs (seaweed feed, seaweed fertilizer) and other fields. Due to the late start of seaweed fertilizer industry, and its economic benefit is far lower than that of food and other fields, the amount of seaweed used for fertilizer production is very small, and it is estimated that it will not exceed 10% of the total seaweed.

According to a number of industry experts, in the case of first-class raw materials and first-class processing technology, the active substances extracted from seaweed do not exceed 20% of the total weight. At present, the total output of all kinds of seaweed fertilizer in China is about 60-700000 tons. According to this calculation, the content of seaweed active substances in algal fertilizer in Shanghai is less than 5%. But the reality is that most products are labeled with more than 10% seaweed active substances, some as high as 30%, and claim to be made from pure natural seaweed in the deep sea.

It is understood that not only the lack of seaweed raw materials, seaweed fertilizer processing technology is also a bottleneck in the industry. A senior person in the industry said bluntly that although there are nearly 100 alginic acid products registered with the Ministry of Agriculture, there are less than five domestic enterprises that really master the technology of extracting active substances from seaweed and concentrating (seaweed powder). Many enterprises buy sodium alginate and other chemical raw materials to form alginic acid, but at present, "water-soluble fertilizer containing alginate" does not have an industry standard, and the general review committee can pass when it is detected that its products contain alginic acid at the time of registration. so many enterprises use this trick to muddle through.