Fertilizer and food limits in a steampunk world

Would an 1880s technological plateau provide mass-produced chemical fertilizer?

The scenario would lack later mass quantities of chemical fertilizer, increasing reliance on crop rotation and constraining food production.

The answer distinguishes the availability of some fertilizer materials from later mass production. Crop rotation would remain important, and the exchange specifically contrasts phosphate with nitrate supplies. Without modern computing, the imagined society would also lack the later genetic engineering discussed by the panel. Together, those limits would constrain how much food could be produced. The argument concerns this particular technology-freeze scenario, without an exact calculation of its population capacity.