A farm organisation has said a "policy response" at EU level is "required immediately" amid "rocketing costs of fertiliser".

The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association (ICMSA) president, Denis Drennan said that farm output prices are "not increasing at anything like the rate of increase in the costs of fertilisers" due to conflict in the Middle East.

"There’s also the fact that the vast bulk of fertiliser purchases will be completed by May 1 while a significant portion of 2026 output will have been sold by May 1 at low prices," he said.

"We have our prices falling or stagnant at the same time as a critical input price is soaring."

He said that the European Commission "monitoring" the situation is "not anything like the appropriate reaction, and we have suggested policy responses".

The ICMSA president has asked what the EU Commission proposes to do "to forestall massive food inflation as the increase in fertilisers is added to output prices".

Also, the ICMSA has asked how can fertiliser that was "already produced, already in the EU, already in Ireland, already in merchants’ yards increase by so much given that the war should have no impact on its price?".

'Opportunism'

Drennan complained that the system is "either unable or unwilling to address opportunism and price-gouging at the expense of price-taking farmers".

He said that this "policy of ignoring price-gouging will have long-term consequences for the family farms in a context where milk is already being produced below the cost of production". 

He called on the EU to immediately instruct the Directorate-General for Competition to "carry out an investigation on fertiliser prices over the past month and report within six weeks with recommendations on how to prevent future repeats of such price hikes due to external market shocks". 

Policy responses

"In terms of immediate policy responses, the EU should implement immediate measures to support farmers," the ICMSA said

These include the suspension of CBAM, zero tariffs on fertiliser imports for a defined period, and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) crisis reserve fund being utilised to "support farmers who paid prices for fertiliser above a specified level". 

"At a national level, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine needs to consider allowing farmers to use straight urea for a defined period to cut the cost of urea-based fertilisers, amongst other measures," Drennan said.

“This is a very real crisis for farmers and it’s immediate; it’s hitting them right now in a way that’s going to lower already massively-depleted incomes and will also stoke food inflation."