Russia is pushing into the EU market with mineral fertilizers and thus avoids the European gas embargo. German agriculture is increasingly dependent on Russian imports.
When temperatures rise in spring, farmers begin to order their fields. Before wheat, barley or rye begin to grow properly, many farmers bring mineral fertilizers. Wheat particularly needs a lot of art fertilizers, because this improves its protein content and thus its adhesive quality. For sufficient fertilized wheat with a high protein content, farmers get the best prices.
But artificial fertilizers are now expensive – too expensive. Farmers who grow wheat are under particularly economical pressure because the wheat prices broke even further at the appointment exchanges last year. Farmer Bernhard von Weichs makes it clear what concrete consequences the difficult price structure has: “Currently, fertilizer prices have increased by around 30 percent, which causes additional costs of around 30,000 euros in my farm alone.” Unfortunately, the wheat prices did not increase at the same time. On the contrary: they fell.
Art fertilizer consists of 90 percent natural gas
Von Weichs, who leads a medium -sized courtyard at Kassel, is worried: “Will we soon not be able to make our own flour from German wheat?” An economic forced situation that affects particularly conventional farmers: Wheat is still the most important crop in Germany and is most grown in Germany – in 2024 to 2.62 million hectares, according to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture (BMEL).
The fertilizer prices in particular were deployed to Ukraine in Germany with the outbreak of the Russian attack war on Ukraine in February 2022. Art fertilizers consists of over 90 percent of natural gas and has become extremely expensive for German producers in times of increasing energy prices. In the first few weeks after the beginning of the war, the mineral fertilizer price once scored 250 to 1,000 euros per ton, has been highly volatile since then and steadily follows the gas price.
The emergency of agriculture in Europe takes advantage of Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin and urges the European market with Russian artificial fertilizers. At the same time, he can undermine the European gas margo by bringing Russia -refined gas to Europe in the form of nitrogen fertilizer. The Russian fertilizer import has risen on a sudden since the Ukraine War, and in 2024 it rose by another 33 percent, as the Reuters news agency reports. Russia is now the most important fertilizer for the European Union (EU) and has introduced around 6.2 million tons into the euro area since the beginning of the Ukraine War, according to the EU Commission.
European Fertilizer will undercut
Also because natural gas in Russia apparently costs mineral fertilizer producers, they could easily drive the German manufacturers into ruin with dumping prices, according to the greatest German fertilizer manufacturer Skw-Piesteritz. In addition to the expensive gas prices, the company from Saxony-Anhalt suffers from the fact that the market is flooded with cheap fertilizer, according to the managing director Carsten Franzke: “Since the Ukraine war, we have had an occupancy rate of 50 to 60 percent compared to the situation before the Ukraine war. The competitor from Russia can produce fertilizer at a much lower price. gives “, says Franzke.
European producers can hardly compete with the dumping fertilizer. If this trend continues, there is a risk that ammonia production in Europe will soon be over and Germany depends on the Russian fertilizer. This is also afraid of the Norwegian Group Yara – Global one of the largest ammonia producers who operates fertilizer production in Brunsbüttel. “The production of mineral fertilizers in Germany and Europe is part of our critical infrastructure. It must be a strategic goal to maintain our independence from autocratic states in the field of food production,” said the managing director of Yara Germany, Marco Fleischmann.
Mineral fertilizer comes across the Baltic Sea every day
But how do the fertilizers come here? German agricultural importers want to face each other Plus minus do not express. They do not provide any information about the flow of goods from Russia – although business with Russian fertilizer is not illegal. So far nitrogen fertilizer is not on any of the EU’s sanction lists.
Research -based information on the most important fertilizers lead to Saint Petersburg. The company registered in Swiss Zug has been running a state -of -the -art mineral fertilizer factory for several years. A movement analysis of freight ships shows that thin -makers regularly commute over the Baltic Sea and thus bring the plastic fertilizer into the European internal market. In Bremen, for example, as part of the Plus minus-Recher checked the transponder data. The “Kalin” freighter, which transported 5,500 tons of mineral fertilizer from the Russian Wyborg to Bremen last March.
The mineral fertilizer had a calculated market value of around 2.5 million euros. Anyone who is behind the imports and introduced the fertilizer to Germany is unknown to the port authority. “Customs cannot object to this cargo, since the ship, the owner or the freight are not on a sanction list,” says Joachim Buthe from the Bremen port office. The German clients, as well as shipowners who make high profits with the cheap fertilizer from Russia, did not want to comment.
Politics would like to impose tariffs
In Brussels in the EU, but also in German politics, resistance is now stirring because the massive fertilizer imports also fill Russia’s war treasure with billions of billions. But also because the latest research arises that the Russian thin -tons are more directly involved in the war production than previously known. According to Reuters, the Russian fertilizer producer, according to Reuters, supplied 38,000 tons of nitric acid to Russian ammunition factories in order to produce artillery ammunition.
German politicians recognize the danger and are now advocating an expansion of the EU sanction regime, including the Minister of Energy Schleswig Holstein, Tobias Goldschmidt: “It is time for a decisive approach to fertilizer exports from Putin’s petrost state. The Federal Government has to put pressure on the fact that an effective sanction regimen is now quickly put to work without a back door.”
