Agriland has been informed that shipments of fertiliser are expected to land in Ireland over the coming weeks.
According to Grassland Agro managing director Liam Woulfe, some of these cargoes are for his company.
“But the vast majority of such volumes are already sold forward to many co-op and merchant clients for their own farmer-customers,” he explained.
“Some of the ships about to dock were scheduled to arrive as far back as January as they were bought in December past.
“Their delay in getting it here is further evidence of just how complicated the international fertiliser trading and logistics market is at the present time.”
According to Woulfe, there may be enough fertiliser supplies in the country to meet farmer-application demand during the month of March only.
“But I still expect that all importers and blenders in Ireland will experience many ‘outages’ on key finished product lines over the coming weeks. After that all bets are off,” he said.
“Since last Thursday, all our international fertiliser suppliers have stopped quoting prices or committing to any future delivery dates,” he added.
“This is due to the additional complexity of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting economic sanctions.”
Impact of Russia/Ukraine conflict on fertiliser
The Grassland Agro director said that fertiliser manufacturers, importers and blenders need a period of time to work out the full impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the geo-political developments that have followed from this within their businesses.
“Fertiliser importers, merchants and co-ops are doing their best to work with their farmer-customers,” Woulfe added.
“This will be very much a day-to-day challenge, one that becomes much more concerning now as we face the peak demand period of fertiliser.
“Talk of farmers wanting to secure fertiliser supplies up to the month of June is just that. Merchants and co-ops have no option but to deal only with the reality of the here andnow at the present time.”
Forward selling
So if the vast bulk of the fertiliser coming into the country at the present time has been forward bought, where does this leave farmers who have not placed an order for product with their merchants up to this point?
“Fertiliser merchants will do their very best to facilitate the needs of all their regular customers at the present time,” Woulfe said.
“But all levels in the chain will need to understand and support each other.
“For those farmers picking up the phone for the first time over the coming days, fertiliser availability will be difficult.”
Woulfe said that he was not aware until now of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) request to government for all grassland farmers to receive a €2,000 support payment from the government.
Such an approach would help mitigate the dramatic increase in fertiliser prices that have rocked the market over recent months, according to the ICSA.
“Anything that can be done to support Irish farmers in this regard must be recognised,” Woulfe continued.
“I have never heard of direct measures of this nature being put in place for Irish farmers in the past. So, it will be interesting to see how government reacts.”