Fertilizers & Agricultural Chemicals Data: From Farm-Gate Bags to Global Nutrient Balances · Head-to-head
Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets (32-10-0039-01) vs USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price
Which fertilizers & agricultural chemicals data: from farm-gate bags to global nutrient balances data fits your job: Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets, or USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets (32-10-0039-01)
USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets | USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price |
|---|---|---|
Reference year (REF_DATE) | Fertilizer year of the observation, formatted YYYY/YYYY for the July-to-June campaign the cumulatives belong to. | not in this set |
Geography (GEO) | Geography ladder: Canada, Eastern provinces and Prairie provinces aggregates, then individual provinces and territories. | not in this set |
Geography identifier (DGUID) | Statistics Canada Digital Geographic Unique Identifier for the geography, so provincial and territorial rows join cleanly to other geographic data. | not in this set |
Fertilizer nutrient content | Nutrient measured by the row: Nitrogen, Phosphate, Potash or Sulphur. | not in this set |
Period | Cumulative window inside the fertilizer year: July to September, July to December, July to March, or the full July to June campaign. | not in this set |
Unit of measure (UOM) | Declared unit for the value; shipments publish in metric tonnes. | not in this set |
Unit code (UOM_ID) | Numeric identifier of the unit of measure, for joins against Statistics Canada's unit reference. | not in this set |
Scalar factor (SCALAR_FACTOR) | Magnitude applied to the stored value; figures arrive in thousands, so 789 reads 789,000 tonnes. | not in this set |
Scalar code (SCALAR_ID) | Numeric identifier of the scalar factor. | not in this set |
Value (VALUE) | Cumulative shipments to agriculture markets for the geography, nutrient and window, after scaling - the single analytical payload of the cube. | not in this set |
Vector (VECTOR) | Time-series identifier for the cell, making any individual series addressable and citable. | not in this set |
Coordinate (COORDINATE) | Cube coordinate combining the dimension member positions, so a cited figure reproduces exactly. | not in this set |
Coverage, side by side
| Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets | USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Granularity | Geography as dimension: Canada, regions and 13 jurisdictions x 4 nutrients x 4 cumulative periods | Crop and product as dimensions: 4 crops x surveyed states x nutrients, plus 32 product-specific tables |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets | USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Documented fields | 16 | 9 documented fields spanning 33 worksheets |
| Field types | String campaign-year key (YYYY/YYYY), string geography, enum nutrient content (Nitrogen / Phosphate / Potash / Sulphur), enum cumulative period, numeric VALUE, integer IDs for unit/scalar/decimals, vector and coordinate series keys, status/symbol/terminated flags | Integer marketing-year key, numeric nutrient consumption columns in thousands of short tons, string state, numeric percent-of-acreage and rate-per-fertilized-acre pairs, numeric per-material price columns |
| Signature fields | `REF_DATE` (e.g. 2025/2026); `GEO` from Canada down to each province and territory; `Fertilizer nutrient content`; `Period`; `VALUE` in thousands of metric tonnes | `Year ending June 30`; `Nitrogen (N)` / `Phosphate (P2O5)` / `Potash (K2O)` + Total; `State`; `Percent of acreage receiving [nutrient]`; `Rate per fertilized acre receiving [nutrient]`; per-material farm-price columns |
| Shared concepts | Fertilizer-year period stamp, nutrient identity (N/P/K), measured annual tonnage, national statistical agency origin | Fertilizer-year period stamp, nutrient identity (N/P/K), measured annual tonnage, national statistical agency origin |
| Entity granularity | Geography as dimension: Canada, regions and 13 jurisdictions x 4 nutrients x 4 cumulative periods | Crop and product as dimensions: 4 crops x surveyed states x nutrients, plus 32 product-specific tables |
| Overlap verdict | Structural overlap only — period, N/P/K identity, tonnage. One adds sulphur, sub-national completeness and series identifiers; the other adds crops, states, products and prices. No shared entities or join key. | Structural overlap only — period, N/P/K identity, tonnage. One adds sulphur, sub-national completeness and series identifiers; the other adds crops, states, products and prices. No shared entities or join key. |
What each does better
Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets
If the question is how much potash or nitrogen actually reached Canadian farmers in the most recent campaign, this is the only one of the two that can answer it.
Sub-national geography on every row. All ten provinces and three territories appear individually, alongside Eastern and Prairie provinces aggregates and the Canada total — Saskatchewan's potash flow out of the same cube as British Columbia's sulphur imports. ERS's state detail exists only for four crops under a survey program, covering 85 to 96 percent of planted acres depending on crop; there are no state-level consumption totals for the country as a whole.
A machine-readable spine. Sixteen documented fields including DGUID standard geographic identifiers, VECTOR time-series IDs and cube COORDINATEs mean every cell can be keyed, joined and re-cut without reverse-engineering worksheet headers — the exact chore ERS imposes with its title-row/column-group/unit-row header stacks. The cube also carries a published correction trail (fourth-quarter 2014 estimates for ammonia, urea and UAN were revised in August 2015), which makes provenance auditable cell by cell.
USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price
Sixty years of history against twenty. National US nutrient consumption runs from 1960 — 2,738.0 thousand short tons of nitrogen that year against 13,009.7 in 2015 — and crop nutrient use from 1964. StatCan's cube starts at fertilizer year 2006/2007. For any structural question about how North American fertilizer intensity evolved across decades of farm consolidation, ERS is the only one of the two with the runway.
The crop dimension. StatCan never tells you which crop took up the nutrient; it reports shipments to agriculture markets as a whole. ERS devotes 24 of its 32 tables to exactly that: percent of acreage receiving each nutrient and rate per fertilized acre, for corn (Tables 9–14), cotton (15–20), soybeans (21–26) and wheat (27–32), state by state. That is the difference between knowing a country bought fertilizer and knowing what its corn belt applied.
Where they're equivalent
Same nutrient spine, same annual grain, same public-sector origin. Both organize the world around nitrogen, phosphate and potash; both report at fertilizer-year annual frequency on campaigns that end mid-calendar-year (July-to-June in Canada, year-ending-June-30 in the US); both come from national statistical agencies and carry official-series pedigree.
Neither crosses the border. There is no Canadian province detail in ERS and no US geography whatsoever in the StatCan cube. Cross-border comparisons require holding both — and converting units before joining, since thousands of metric tonnes and thousands of short tons differ by about 10 percent.
The verdict
Pick by whether your question names a place and a recent season, or a crop and a decade.
Take the StatCan cube when the unit of analysis is Canada now: provincial shipment flows for the current fertilizer year, potash and nitrogen movements across the 13 jurisdictions, or any monitoring loop that must stay current — its 2025/2026 cumulatives arrive while ERS's newest number is already seven years old.
Nothing in the StatCan cube substitutes for any of those.
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit. They tie at 9/10, answer different questions cleanly enough that the wrong choice is usually visible within one sample pull — if your question names a Canadian province, the fit test settles it immediately.
Sample both, pick by fit. See Statistics Canada — Fertilizer shipments to Canadian agriculture markets · See USDA ERS Fertilizer Use and Price
Or take both in one feed
Two cautions straight from the records. First, there is no join key: the StatCan cube rows to fertilizer-year x geography x nutrient x cumulative-period, while the workbook scatters its facts across 32 differently-headed tables — so the bridge is a mapping you own, not a shared identifier. Second, reconcile units before merging: thousands of metric tonnes against thousands of short tons, and campaign years that end in June on both sides of the border but start counting differently.
Datadory ships either record alone or both merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly — your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Do the two datasets cover the same ground anywhere?
Only structurally. Both reduce to a fertilizer-year stamp, a nutrient identity among nitrogen, phosphate and potash, and an annual tonnage figure from a national statistical agency. Beyond that they diverge completely: one country each, no shared entities, no join key, metric tonnes on one side against short tons on the other, and sulphur present only in the Canadian cube.
Which fertilizer dataset has more recent data?
Statistics Canada 32-10-0039-01, decisively. For anything current, only one of the two can answer.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes. Either record arrives alone or merged onto one delivery calendar, normalized so units stop colliding — thousands of metric tonnes by province against thousands of short tons by crop and state — delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Name the geographies, nutrients, crops and windows when you request the sample and it lands pre-cut, with field definitions attached.