“Russian fertiliser is the new gas” for Europe, top producer warns

Europe is “sleepwalking” into becoming dependent on Russian fertiliser, just as it did with gas, says one of the largest producers of crop nutrients.

Nitrogen fertilisers, which are important to plant growth, are made using natural gas and Russia is exporting more of it to Europe, replacing some of the gas banned by the EU, Financial Times quotes Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Yara International, one of the world’s largest producers of nitrogen-based mineral fertilisers, as saying.

“Fertiliser is the new gas,” Holsether said. “It is a paradox that the aim is to reduce Europe’s dependency on Russia, and then now we are sleepwalking into handing over critical food and fertilising power to Russia.”

The EU imported twice as much urea, a common fertiliser, from Russia in the year to June 2023 compared with a year earlier, according to Eurostat. Russian imports for the current season, the year to this June, are lower but still historically high and account for a third of total urea imports into the bloc.

The price of crop nutrients soared in the wake of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as sanctions imposed on Russia limited the availability of natural gas, a main input for nitrogen fertilisers such as ammonia and urea.

This hit European farmers financially while those elsewhere, especially in Africa, stopped using fertiliser altogether, hampering yields and deepening a global food crisis.