Synthetic fertilizer is shunned by organic gardeners and one reason is the fact that they are made from petroleum, or so it is claimed. Who wants to put petroleum chemicals into their garden and then eat vegetables from them? Nobody.
Terms like oil-based fertilizer, petroleum fertilizer and petrochemical fertilizer have been used to describe synthetic fertilizers, as in this quote from a popular gardening blog, “Petrochemical fertilizers are another name for the synthetic products because they are produced using large quantities of petroleum.”
I am not going to argue for or against synthetic fertilizer in this post. I just want to examine the claim that fertilizer is made from petroleum.