Under our lead, the Parliament is set today to take another step towards securing affordable and better fertilisers for European farmers.

Fertilisers play a significant role in food security. Yet, their production nowadays largely depends on natural gas, the costs of which have reached record levels in the EU since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

To ensure availability and affordability of fertilisers for European agriculture, the Commission put forward, at end of last year, a communication to make the EU agricultural sector more resilient in the face of the worrying fertiliser crisis. The communication aims to reduce farmers’ dependencies on third countries, while securing yields. The S&Ds consider this to be a good start, but still far from sufficient to address the distortions in the fertilisers market, and to solve the high input cost for farmers.

Our Group has highlighted the importance of digital tools to produce fertilisers with fewer resources than currently, in order to favour more sustainable farming in Europe. We have also requested member states to support farmers in the transition to organic fertilisers.

Clara Aguilera, S&D coordinator of the committee on agriculture and rural development, said:

“This crisis has revealed that our fertilisers can be environmentally smart and “Made in EU”. Shifting from natural gas-based fertilisers to organic ones will also allow the EU to have better control on their costs – to the benefit of farmers.

“We need rapid development of a real EU strategy for fertilisers that can put an end to our dependency on Russia and to other geopolitically unstable regions. The main objective is to ensure the availability and affordability of fertilisers for European farmers.”