For those who missed the discussion on Farming Today on 23 April, a report titled “The Strategic Geography of Fertilisers: Implications for UK Preparedness” was published on 20 April by The National Preparedness Commission. The report’s authors are Antony So, Agrifood and Food Systems Policy Analyst and Tim Lang, former Lancashire hill farmer and now Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City University London’s Centre for Food Policy who was interviewed on Farming Today.
As a distraction from the tail end of lambing, calving and the start of silage making, the report is short and to the point and well worth the read. It is an academic publication and well referenced. Its premise is that man-made fertilisers are the chemical backbone of post-World War II agriculture and, without them, the food system as we know it would not function. The statistics show that the UK produced 371,000 tonnes of fertiliser in 2019-2021, but imported 1,287,000 tonnes in the same period: as a result, the UK is particularly exposed to any shortages. That is the case now with the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite the possibility of new emerging technologies, the UK has limited (and reduced) capacity for the production of ammonia (N). It does have significant deposits of domestic potash (K), and the world’s only polyhalite product which is mined at Boulby in North Yorkshire and sold as Polysulphate, but has no recoverable deposits of phosphate (P), meaning that all P fertilisers are imported.
The report presents the UK with four possible options, on which it comments as follows:
- The first option would be, in difficult circumstances, to set out to build stockpiles. We think this would be fraught with difficulty, not least financial. It is too late now, but it might be relevant if the conflict in the Middle East is patched up in the short term.
- The second option would be to duck the issue and let market dynamics determine use, i.e. let costs fluctuate wildly. We believe this would be fraught with political difficulty and could lead to farmers not taking the risk of planting winter cereals this autumn. Government would be unwise to think that even giant retailers in the UK food system can resolve the fertiliser challenge.
- The third would be to introduce emergency subsidies to help growers buy over-priced fertilisers. We think this is both unlikely and unworkable long-term. It is a recipe for exploitation of the public purse.
- The final option for the UK, rather akin to its energy options, is to accelerate the transition away from reliance on NPK fertilisers and towards lower input and organic systems. This would entail reconfiguration of land use, yield management and especially use of cereals in animal foods. Feeding humans would need to take priority.
Many readers (like us) may not have heard of the The National Preparedness Commission. It describes itself as an independent and non-political body, whose fundamental objective is to promote policies and actions to help the UK be significantly better prepared to avoid, mitigate, respond to, and recover from major shocks, threats and challenges. It has an august board of 54 commissioners drawn from a wide range of sectors – although not from the food and farming sectors – and was created post COVID-19 “to promote better readiness for a major crisis or incident – seeking to achieve this by supporting policy change and other activities that will enable the UK to prevent, withstand, recover and ‘build back better’ from major disruptions.”
Whilst it is always interesting and often useful to have many views, some of our farming clients may not recognise the report’s four options as the only possible scenarios for our food and farming systems as they continue to evolve to feed a growing population.
