Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) president Francie Gorman has called on MEPs to seek an urgent suspension of the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) that he said will add €12bn to EU farmers’ costs over the next seven years.

CBAM has added a carbon levy on all fertilisers imported into the EU since January 2026 in a bid to shield European manufacturers from shipments originating from markets with more lax climate regimes.

“At the moment, fertiliser is just too expensive. What can we do in Europe to try and improve that,” Gorman asked the European Parliament’s committee on agriculture this week.

ADVERTISEMENT

“CBAM is a huge issue for us and the idea that we are going to pay CBAM tax that ultimately farmers will pay does not sit well with us.”

Doubling down

Gorman’s doubling down on calls for a suspension comes as the levels of EU chemical nitrogen imports are running at their lowest levels in well over a decade, staying below half their five-year average in the provisional data up to the end of June.

The latest figures in the EU’s fertiliser database indicate that imports of nitrogen fertilisers between January and the end of June 2026 stood at 2.6m tonnes, down significantly from shipments within the same timeframe of 7.1m tonnes and 5.7m tonnes in the two years prior and with exports from the EU back just marginally.

“If we can’t afford it, it shouldn’t be implemented full stop. There should be a suspension of CBAM until such a point in time that we are able to afford it as farmers and we are not against the decarbonisation of the EU fertiliser industry.

“We are rightly up for the challenge of that, but it is something that must be seen in a much longer-term context,” MEPs heard from the IFA leader.

'Utopian'

Gorman dismissed the notion that a fertiliser import tax ultimately paid by farmers can decarbonise EU fertilisers as “folly” where “time, innovation and money” will all have a role to play.

“This idea that we will have a utopia where we will wake up in the morning and be able to produce crops without fertiliser is not going to happen in the short term,” he said.

The IFA president also stated that Europe needs “greater transparency” in fertiliser prices, saying that “we don’t seem to be getting the reduction in fertiliser prices that farmers in the rest of the world are getting in the last number of weeks”.

Need to review 170kg N/ha

The agriculture committee also heard from professor Erik Meers of Ghent University in its sitting on fertiliser.

Prof Meers pointed out a “paradox” with the EU’s regulatory approach to farm nutrients that sees the nitrates directive apply separate spreading limits for chemical and organic nitrogen sources results in regions with the highest “organic nitrogen surpluses among the highest users of chemical fertilisers”.

The 170kg organic N/ha blanket limit currently set out in the nitrates directive for nitrates vulnerable zones has no basis in science, the researcher said, adding that he saw the entire regulation being “long overdue a revision”.

“The 170kg was not scientifically based at the time it was launched so it might indeed be subject to evaluation but of course, the nitrates directive needs to uphold its environmental quality,” prof Meers said.

The professor also warned MEPs that Europe could be just one decade out from seeing a “significant” hike in phosphorous costs arising from producers hitting peak phosphate output before supply “monopolies” step up supply restrictions.