Between £10/t to £20/t has come off fertiliser price lists in NI in an attempt to get product moving on to farms.

Local suppliers indicate that sales have been sluggish since prices shot up during the spring and there is now a push to get stocks cleared before demand drops off throughout the summer.

Quotes from local suppliers for CAN are around the £450 mark at present. Compound products such as 25-5-5 are available from £500/t and quotes for 20-10-10 are at £520/t.

ADVERTISEMENT

While prices have eased back slightly from the spring peak, current quotes for most products are still around £100/t more expensive than this time last year.

Aside from high prices, other factors are contributing to subdued demand for fertiliser at present.

A key reason is many local farmers still have fertiliser in store which was forward bought earlier in the year.

Also, silage crops have generally bulked well to date so there is no major push to apply extra fertiliser to boost fodder stocks, while there is still plenty of slurry in tanks which farmers are keen to utilise for later silage cuts.

Plan

Meanwhile, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) presented a “fertiliser resilience plan” to the UK government on Wednesday which sets out “immediate actions” to help control farm input costs.

It includes a proposal for direct support where farmers could claim 70% of additional fertiliser costs when imported ammonium nitrate hits a trigger point of £500/t.

The NFU also want the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which is set to go live from January 2027, to be postponed, with a market review conducted next year.

“Introduction of CBAM could further increase fertiliser costs, create import friction, and risks sparking further food price inflation,” the NFU state.

Other proposed actions in the plan include improving transparency in the fertiliser market with more information made available to UK farmers on trade, stocks, usage and pricing.

The NFU point that around 60% of nitrogen fertiliser is imported and the remainder is produced domestically using imported ammonia.

“In the long term, it all comes down to resilience. We can’t keep being collateral damage to global politics,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.

“We need to find ways to build fairness, transparency and support into our domestic food production system,” he added.