The purpose of study is to analyze the current state of provision of the country's agriculture with various types of fertilizers, as well as the possible reasons for such provision. As a result of analysis it was found out that the fertilizer industry of the Russian Federation is focused more on the foreign consumer. At the same time, the agrarians of our country experience a chronic shortage in mineral fertilizers. Despite the full satisfaction of the declared needs of the country's agrarians in mineral fertilizers – 3.2 million tons, they were applied only on half of the sown territories (53.3 %). At the same time, regions with harsh climate were provided the worst. According to the estimates of some analysts, the real need of agroindustrial complex for mineral fertilizers is at the level of 8.5–17.5 million tons, which is at least three times more than declared. The reasons why the country's agrarians do not receive the required amount of fertilizers are connected with the restructuring of the economy and the mechanisms of intra-state interaction that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union. All this contributed to the consolidation of the extensive method of farming. In turn, the production facilities of the fertilizer industry are able to provide both external and domestic markets by far: the gap between the production and sale of fertilizers is 6.15–20.69 % over the last 6 years. The saturation of soils with organic fertilizers is about 6 %. Due to the imbalance of needs and the provision of fertilizers for agrarians, the efficiency of agricultural production is below the world average. A possible way out of the current situation may be the improvement of investment attractiveness of agriculture by further developing the mechanism of State support for the agro-industrial complex.
Key words: mineral fertilizers, land degradation, fertilizer industry, nitrogen fertilizers, nutrient removal.
