A Forecasting Method for Fertilizers Consumption in Brazil
Authors: Eduardo Ogasawara, Daniel Oliveira, Fábio Junior, Rafael Castaneda, Myrna Amorim, Renato Mauro, Jorge Soares, João Quadros, Eduardo Bezerra
Published at International Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Information Systems (IJAEIS Volume 4, Issue 2, 2013)
Abstract. Tracking information about fertilizers consumption in the world is very important since they are used to produce agriculture commodities. Brazil consumes a large amount of fertilizers due to its large-scale agriculture fields. Most of these fertilizers are currently imported. The analysis of consumption of major fertilizers, such as Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium (NPK), Sulfur, Phosphate Rock, Potash, and Nitrogen become critical for long-term government decisions. In this paper we present a method for fertilizers consumption forecasting based on both Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and logistic function models. Our method was used to forecast fertilizers consumption in Brazil for the next 20 years considering different economic growth for the entire country.