Europe’s Fertiliser Dependencies: Where Ecology Meets Geopolitics 

For almost century, Europe’s agriculture has been structurally reliant on chemical fertilisers. The risks of this dependence have been made amply clear by successive conflicts that have disrupted supply chains, while decades of intensive application have led to pollution and soil imbalances. Changing this trajectory will be a tough challenge.

In France, the baguette has recently become a matter of public concern. According to the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES), staples of the French diet like bread, cereals, and even potatoes are among the main pathways of exposure to cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal that accumulates in agricultural soils. While cadmium is naturally present in the environment, its levels in France have become increasingly concerning over the past two decades, prompting ANSES to issue warnings that a significant share of the population is estimated to exceed health-based reference exposure values, with higher levels observed among children and adolescents. At the core of this looming public health crisis lies the intensive use of phosphate-based fertilisers. 

As the French Parliament moved to tighten cadmium limits in agricultural soils this spring – finally aligning national standards with existing European rules – the European Commission adopted a Fertiliser Action Plan designed to facilitate farmers’ access to key agricultural inputs. Like previous geopolitical shocks, the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for global trade, have revealed Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers.  

These local, national, European, and global developments point to a structural vulnerability at the heart of Europe’s food system, with fertilisers lying at the intersection of ecological constraints, public health, market volatility, and external dependence.  

Vulnerable supply chains 

On 19 May, more than 200 farmers protested in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, carrying a large red banner declaring a “fertiliser crisis”. Just a few weeks earlier, in April, the prices of many raw materials and fertilisers had surged. Urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, had climbed above 850 dollars per tonne, the highest level since 2022.  An estimated 30 per cent of globally traded volumes of urea passed through Hormuz before the war.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system.

The effect of the blockade was compounded by the growing importance of Gulf states in the global fertiliser market. The world’s largest urea production complex, for instance, is located south of Doha, in Qatar. In the last 10 years, Saudi Arabia has also rapidly climbed the ranks among leading producers of phosphate-based fertilisers. The broader Gulf energy industrial complex, which underpins global fertiliser production, was put under pressure following Iran’s strikes on key energy infrastructure in the region. Qatar, for instance, suspended production of urea, ammonia, and sulfur after key facilities were damaged. 

Ammonia and sulphur, two key feedstocks used in fertiliser production, are intertwined with the fossil fuels extracted in the region. Ammonia, the key feedstock for the production of urea and all other nitrogen-based fertilisers, is obtained by combining nitrogen with hydrogen, the latter typically extracted from natural gas. Although efforts are underway to produce ammonia using “green hydrogen” produced from renewables, these technologies remain marginal.  

Similarly, sulphur is largely recovered as a by-product of oil and natural gas processing. Most of it is converted into sulfuric acid, essential for producing phosphate fertilisers, whose supply chains have also been disrupted by the war: Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are major sulphur exporters. Iran, which exported sulphur to China, Latin America, Pakistan, India, and other Asian and African countries, halted production of both sulphur and ammonia during the conflict. In light of the crisis, countries such as China – the world’s largest producer of sulfuric acid – Turkey, and India considered export restrictions. 

An old dependency 

Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers and their feedstocks has deep historical roots. Fertiliser use began as an innovative solution to increase agricultural productivity in the early 20th century, gradually reshaping the continent’s food system, and tying farming to industrial production and global supply chains. At the heart of this shift lies the industrial processing of three essential nutrients found naturally in the environment: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. “It’s like a big kitchen,” a laboratory operator at Norwegian fertiliser giant Yara International, told me. “These elements are mixed together according to farmers’ needs, increasingly in tailor-made combinations.” 

One of the earliest artificial fertilisers, superphosphate (SSP), was first produced commercially in the mid-19th century by treating phosphate rock, rich in phosphorus, with sulphuric acid. With SSP, fertiliser manufacturing gradually moved from farms – where the natural manure cycle was rooted in the recycling of organic waste back into agricultural soils – into the hands of the agrochemical industry, accompanying the industrialisation of agriculture in the early 20th century.  

The expansion of phosphate use further tied agrochemistry to mining: phosphate rock is only found in a handful of countries, particularly in North Africa. Morocco alone holds more than 70 per cent of global phosphate reserves; it is the world’s largest producer and the second-largest exporter after China. With some reserves facing depletion in the coming decades, Beijing has implemented export controls on phosphate fertilisers since 2021. In 2017, the European Commission added phosphate to its list of critical raw materials, acknowledging its strategic importance and Europe’s exposure to supply risk.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system. Globally, fertiliser use rose from roughly 30 million tonnes in 1960 to more than 190 million tonnes today – a more than sixfold increase. According to estimates by Fertilizers Europe, the industry’s main trade association in the EU, of the roughly 180 million hectares of agricultural land in the European Union, nearly 124 million are now fertilised. The remaining areas consist mainly of permanent grasslands, fallow land, or land left temporarily out of production. 

Arable land dedicated to annual crops accounts for 57 per cent of fertilised land. Yet this broad picture masks significant regional differences. In Western Europe, a substantial share of agricultural land is devoted to permanent crops (such as vineyards, orchards, and forestry plantations) as well as fertilised grasslands. In Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, agriculture is more heavily concentrated on large-scale annual cropping systems, particularly cereals, oilseeds such as rapeseed and sunflower, and fodder crops used for animal feed. As a result, Fertilizers Europe expects most Central and Eastern European EU member states to record higher fertiliser consumption in the coming years. 

The EU as a whole remains a key player in the global fertiliser market, with France, Poland, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Romania accounting for the bulk of phosphate fertiliser consumption. France is also the continent’s largest consumer of nitrogen fertilisers.  

However, overall consumption is contracting. In 2023, European agriculture applied 9.3 million tonnes of mineral fertilisers, marking a 3.7 per cent decrease compared to 2022 and a decline of more than 20 per cent from the 2017 peak. While producer associations point to signs of stabilisation and hope for a return to pre-2022 levels, the market still appears not to have fully recovered from the disruptions triggered by the war in Ukraine.  

But amid recurring geopolitical shocks and ecosystems reaching critical conditions, to what extent is a return to business as usual in fertiliser use necessary or desirable? 

Nutrition and pollution 

Intensive fertilisation has enabled Europe to expand agricultural production and secure millions of tonnes of food, but it has also created a dependence that goes beyond the actual agronomic needs of soils.  

Decades of continuous application have, in some cases, led to nutrient accumulation or imbalances. Numerous studies, some of them published by fertiliser producer associations themselves, suggest that fertiliser needs in many European and American production systems are increasingly oriented toward maintenance applications (keeping existing soil nutrient levels stable) rather than corrective inputs (raising deficient nutrient levels to a healthy target). Meanwhile, regions facing nutrient deficiencies, such as many African countries, still struggle to access fertilisers. 

Intensive nutrient use in the Global North has intensified concerns over soil health, water quality, and the accumulation of contaminants in agricultural land, all of which have entered public and policy debates. In recent years, discussions on fertiliser use in the EU have increasingly centred on pollution linked to eutrophication, a process in which excess nutrients in water bodies trigger algal blooms that deplete oxygen and disrupt aquatic ecosystems. The problem remains unresolved and continues to affect lakes and river deltas across Europe, despite the EU Nitrates Directive, which aims to reduce agricultural nitrate pollution. 

In Italy’s Po Delta, pollutants accumulated along the river system cause algal blooms, particularly in the summer. In Spain, civil society organisations have taken agro-industrial actors to court for eutrophication in the Mar Menor, accusing them of illegal discharges that contribute to the lagoon’s degradation. France’s recent cadmium controversy has expanded the debate on fertiliser sustainability beyond production sites to food safety and public health concerns.  

EU contradictions 

Despite the reassuring slogans of fertiliser producers, often framed in humanitarian terms – “saving lives” and “feeding the planet,” – the environmental costs of the agrochemical industry have long fuelled public debate and grassroots mobilisation. In autumn 2025, for instance, Tunisia saw large demonstrations against the Groupe Chimique Tunisien along the coastline of Gabès, following the hospitalisation of more than 200 people, mostly children, for respiratory distress and gas poisoning. 

In Europe, this tension between productivity and environmental limits gradually entered policy frameworks. In the early 2000s, the European agricultural policy framework finally acknowledged the urgency of limiting fertiliser dispersion by introducing environmental measures and, more recently, eco-schemes under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These measures encourage farmers to return to more traditional agroecological practices, such as crop rotation with legumes and other plants capable of naturally enriching the soil. Agroecology Europe, a Brussels-based organisation, also recommends a partial return to non-chemical soil fertilisation methods.  

Geopolitical instability has added another layer of urgency to Europe’s need to reduce its dependency on mineral fertilisers. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, stressed in May that the EU’s Fertiliser Action Plan isn’t just about supporting farmers in the short term but also aimed at “accelerating innovation in sustainable, home-grown solutions”. She also acknowledged that “climate leadership and economic resilience are interlinked”. 

However, the EU is rolling back climate and environmental measures to placate farmers and pursue economic competitiveness. In early 2026, under pressure from the agrochemical sector, the European Commission proposed an amendment to its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), allowing for the temporary exclusion of certain products – particularly fertilisers – in the event of “serious harm to the EU internal market.” Meanwhile, the signing of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement with South American countries in January 2026 angered the agricultural sector, particularly in France, with farmers fearing unfair competition from imported products.  

These conflicting interests show that reversing a century-long trajectory of agricultural intensification and supply fragmentation won’t be easy, particularly in the current political climate. In this context, the EU appears to be advancing the liberalisation of agricultural policy under the banner of “sovereignty”. However, the declining productivity of soils and mounting ecological pressures both point to the need to transform this trajectory.