European Fertiliser Blenders Association
Nitrogen and phosphorus can have significant impact on climate change and air and water quality. The effect on the accumulation of nitrate and the eutrophication of surface water is decreasing. However, agriculture accounts for an increasing proportion of Greenhouse Gas emissions across Europe with nitrogen from both mineral fertilisers and especially organic sources a key contributor.
Agricultural and environmental policy is increasingly focussing on the use and management of nutrients from mineral fertilisers and organic sources to to the potential impacts on climate change and air and water quality.
The EU ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy, published in 2020 as part of the EU ‘Green Deal’, proposed a reduction of at least 20% in the use of nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers by 2030, with the objective of reducing nutrient losses to the environment by 50% (EU, 2020).
Balanced soil and crop nutrition, delivered by blended prescription fertilisers, can play a key role in mitigating the impacts of reduced nitrogen inputs.
There is increasing interest in nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) which expresses the amount of nitrogen recovered by a crop as a percentage of the total available nitrogen from soil and inputs of mineral fertilisers and manures.
Increasing NUE % means more nitrogen is recovered by the crop, which gives the farmer a better return on fertiliser spend and less nitrogen is at risk of loss to the environment. Higher NUE is also likely to help farmers reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of their farm output.
The uptake of nitrogen is closely related to soil pH and having an appropriate balance of other key nutrients, including phosphorus, potassium, sulphur and several micro-nutrients involved in the transformation and assimilation of nitrogen, for example molybdenum.
The move towards broad-spectrum analyses, integrated nutrient management planning and NUE are all factors that put more focus on the need for multi-nutrient prescription compounds produced as blended fertilisers.
Fertiliser prices increased across Europe by up to 300% between June 2021 and September 2022, on the back of high gas prices and geo-political impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine which limited global fertiliser supply.
More and more regularly, European ammonia producers are having to temporarily shut down due to uneconomic gas prices.
With fluctuation in prices due to geo-political issues set to continue for the foreseeable future, there is growing need for farmers and their advisors to use integrated nutrient management tools to determine precise nutrient requirements.
This will continue to drive a reduction in over applying nutrients that are not needed by crop and soil, and continue to increase demand for prescription blended fertilisers.