The ability of modern agriculture to meet future food
demand imposed
by accelerating growth of the world’s population is a major
challenge, and fertilizers play a key role by replacing nutrients
in agricultural soil. Given the need for fertilizers, their cost in
nonrenewable resources and energy, and the consequences of the greenhouse
gas emissions required to make them, people have begun to explore
ways to make fertilizer manufacturing and use more sustainable. Using
data from the CAS Content Collection, this review examines and analyzes
the academic and patent literature on sustainable fertilizers from
2001 to 2021. The breakdown of journal and patent literature publication
over time on this topic, country or region of publications, the substances
included in published research, among other things allow us to understand
the general progress in the field as well as the classes of materials
and concepts driving innovation. We hope that this bibliometric analysis
and literary review will assist researchers in relevant industries
to discover and implement ways to supplement conventional fertilizers
and nutrient sources while improving the efficiency and sustainability
of waste management and ammonia production.