  The importance of fertilizers to agricultural production is undeniable, and
most economies rely on international trade for fertilizer use. The stability of
fertilizer trade networks is fundamental to food security. We use three valid
methods to measure the temporal stability of the overall network and different
functional sub-networks of the three fertilizer nutrients N, P and K from 1990
to 2018. The international N, P and K trade systems all have a trend of
increasing stability with the process of globalization. The large-weight
sub-network has relatively high stability, but is more likely to be impacted by
extreme events. The small-weight sub-network is less stable, but has a strong
self-healing ability and is less affected by shocks. Overall, all the three
fertilizer trade networks exhibit a stable core with restorable periphery. The
overall network stability of the three fertilizers is close, but the K trade
has a significantly higher stability in the core part, and the N trade is the
most stable in the non-core part.
