One in every nine bags of fertiliser sold last year in Ireland may have fallen below the quality standards laid down in Irish and EU law, figures contained in the Department of Agriculture’s annual report for 2023 suggest.

The Department’s fertiliser inspection programme took 192 fertiliser samples from manufacturers in 2023, to assess products’ compliance with labelling rules and minimum nutrient requirements.

These tests found that 11% of samples did not meet the tolerance limits laid down in law.

If these samples were broadly representative of all fertiliser put on the market during the window that most of last year’s fertiliser was bought by farmers – between October 2022 and September 2023 – then as much as 125,000t may have been out-of-tolerance.

The out-of-tolerance levels detected surged in 2022 to similar levels witnessed last year, while the equivalent figures reported for 2021 and the two years previous were 4.9%, 5.8% and 3.9% respectively.

The Irish Farmers Journal is awaiting further detail from the Department on the enforcement action taken where samples of fertiliser destined for the market were found not to meet the required standards and whether fines were issued to offenders. Its annual report only notes that manufacturers were informed of all out-of-tolerance results.

EU regulation states that where a fertiliser does not comply with nutrient specifications laid out, a manufacturer must take immediate corrective action to take the product into line with required standards, withdraw the product, or issue a recall notice.

IFA farm business chair Bill O’Keeffe called for any manufacturer found to have sold sub-standard fertiliser to be named, shamed and fined.

“There are no real consequences if it was only the manufacturer informed but no-one else. There need to be penalties, offenders need to be named and shamed,” O’Keeffe said.

“Farmers are left very exposed. Everything that leaves the farmgate is weighed and undergoes quality checks, yet unless they have a weighbridge, they do not know if they get what they paid for.

“We now need to know if a few bad actors are responsible for these results, or if it is widespread in the industry.”