In 12 months the price of commonly used fertilisers essential for Australia’s $43 billion cropping industries has increased by as much as 230 per cent.
Key points:
- Fertiliser prices have risen an extraordinary amount over the past year
- An increase in energy costs is behind the price rise
- Australian grain growers are looking for alternative fertiliser options
Thomas Elder Markets commodity analyst Andrew Whitelaw recently analysed fertiliser prices and he was shocked by what his modelling revealed.
“If we look at urea and [diammonium phosphate], those prices this time last year were around about $400 to $550 a tonne landed in Australia,” he said.
“Now we’re talking, for both of them, above $1,400 a tonne.
Rising cost of synthetic nitrogen
Mark Seymour, a veteran crop scientist specialising in pulses in Western Australia, said the rising cost of synthetic nitrogen could lead to farmers investigating whether a pasture or pulse crop could fit into their systems to naturally fix nitrogen into the soil.
“No one thing will fit everyone,” he said.
“Some people may just reduce their inputs and grow the same enterprise; there’s talk of more fallow in the areas that do fallow well and for the areas that do legume relatively well, you might expect more go into those and reduce inputs into the legume phase.
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