The European Commission’s upcoming communication on the fertiliser crisis must outline real measures that will improve the fertiliser availability situation set to affect Europe next spring, MEP Colm Markey has said.

Markey said there has been a “fundamental lack of action” in the Commission on preparing the EU for tight fertiliser supplies and that a scarcity of product is more likely in Ireland, given its location as an island on the edge of the continent.

“There’s broad agreement in parliament that something has to be done. You always get some detractors who see the situation as an opportunity to cut usage but, overall, there is support,” Markey told the Irish Farmers Journal.

Meaningful measures

The introduction of “meaningful” measures will be needed to ensure food security and would not damage the general direction of EU agriculture to reducing its dependency on chemical fertiliser in the medium to long-term.

“The anti-dumping duties look set to stay but there are other tariffs they can look at.”

He suggested measures which should be considered are sourcing raw materials for fertiliser manufacture from alternative sources, sourcing product itself overseas or making finance available through the European Central Bank, allowing importers to borrow more to buy fertiliser.

“Merchants would need three-and-a-half times the credit to secure the same volume this year compared with before - that’s not really possible.

“On the risk, if they hadn’t offloaded fertiliser and price drops €100/t, on 10,000/t, that’s €1m. It’s just too much. There needs to be some market security, some level of credit there.”

Irish farm sector stakeholders were told at the National Fodder and Food Security Committee on Wednesday that an EU fertiliser strategy is “under discussion” at present.

Any measures proposed by the Commission will require coherence with existing EU “energy, fertiliser and food security” policies, the committee heard.