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Reactive nitrogen (N) inputs in agriculture strongly outpace the outputs at the global scale due to inefficiencies in cropland N use. While improvement in agricultural practices and environmental legislation in developed regions such as Western Europe have led to a remarkable increase in the N use efficiency since 1985, this lower requirement for reactive N inputs via synthetic fertilizers has yet to occur in many developing and transition regions. Here, we explore future N input requirements and N use efficiency in agriculture for the five shared socioeconomic pathways. Results show that under the most optimistic sustainability scenario, the global synthetic fertilizer use in croplands stabilizes and even shrinks (85 Tg N yr−1 in 2050) regardless of the increase in crop production required to feed the larger estimated population. This scenario is highly dependent on projected increases in N use efficiency, particularly in South and East Asia. In our most pessimistic scenario, synthetic fertilization application rates are expected to increase almost threefold by 2050 (260 Tg N yr−1). Excepting the sustainability scenario, all other projected scenarios reveal that the areal N surpluses will exceed acceptable limits in most of the developing regions.

Assessing future reactive nitrogen inputs into global croplands based on the shared socioeconomic pathways