Fertilizer trade: who ships the potash, and to whom

Definitions and method

Import and export quantities are both kept, and they are not duplicates: an import reported by the buyer and the matching export reported by the seller are two countries' separate statements about the same shipment, and where they disagree that disagreement is itself the finding. Neither is averaged into the other. Measured in nutrient content rather than product weight, so the figures are directly comparable with the fertilizer use table but smaller than the tonnage of physical urea or muriate of potash that crossed the border. The nutrient totals are used rather than the individual products, which keeps a country's imports on the same scale as its consumption. This file, unusually for FAO, carries no regional aggregates in either the reporter or the partner column; the check that would remove them still runs, because a partner aggregate sums to the same total as every real partner combined and would halve any concentration measure it touched. Two FAO areas are deliberately left out: 'Sudan (former)' and 'Ethiopia PDR' each cover a country together with one that has since separated from it, and ISO issues no code for either, so folding them into Sudan or Ethiopia would move a larger country's trade into a smaller one's series.