High fertiliser prices increase pressure on Finnish farmers

Fertiliser sales for the new growing season have been slower than in previous years as prices remain high compared with farmers’ producer prices, Yle reports.

Atso Ala-Kopsala, who runs a dairy farm with 110 milking cows in Toholampi in Central Ostrobothnia, has already bought most of the fertiliser needed for the coming season’s grass and grain production.

The farm has spent about 50,000 to 70,000 euros on fertilisers each year in recent years. Its annual turnover is approximately one million euros.

“Saving on fertilising is not really an option on a dairy farm. The animals need good-quality feed, and in practice it cannot be produced without fertilisers,” Ala-Kopsala said.

Market leader Yara usually opens sales for the coming fertiliser season in June. This year, sales have progressed more slowly than in previous years. The Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners, MTK, said the slowdown was due to high costs combined with low producer prices.

Yara also said prices at the beginning of the season were higher than last year. There is no publicly available national, real-time data on fertiliser prices in Finland. Farmers buy fertilisers from retailers, with prices based on individual offers.

“It is a significant production input that requires a lot of money. Farmers are considering when it is worth buying,” said Niko Hyppönen, executive director of MTK Central Ostrobothnia.

According to Statistics Finland, the purchase price index for fertilisers and soil improvers was 12.9 per cent higher in June than a year earlier. The increase has been linked in part to the indirect effects of Russia’s war of aggression and the crisis in the Middle East.

Cadmium rules aim to increase competition

One attempt to lower fertiliser prices is a cadmium regulation that came into force at the beginning of August. Cadmium, a toxic heavy metal, occurs in mineral fertilisers containing phosphorus.

Finland has previously had stricter cadmium limits than the rest of Europe because cadmium occurs in a form that is more easily absorbed by plants in Finnish soil.

Finland has now raised the permitted cadmium limits in fertilisers for a two-year period. The aim is to improve availability and introduce more price competition to the market.

Yara, a Norwegian company, currently produces up to 80 per cent of all fertilisers used in Finland. Its phosphorus fertilisers naturally have low cadmium levels.

Titta Berlin, a senior official in the food safety unit of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, said the market was being closely monitored.

“We will see what impact this has. We hope that if fertilisers are imported from elsewhere, they will come from places where phosphorus has a low cadmium content, such as Canada or South Africa,” Berlin said.

However, the availability of alternative products remains uncertain. Freight and processing costs for imported phosphorus could make the final product too expensive.

Hyppönen is calling for national, up-to-date fertiliser price statistics to improve monitoring of price trends. At present, information is available retrospectively and only at a general European level.