Serbia, Fertilizer prices are lower, but it is still expensive for farmers

Published on 5. February 2023., News

The question is how much of it will be acquired and used for feeding wheat, which is necessary already at the end of February

Fertilizer prices are also lower on the Serbian market since last week. Most of the chemicals needed for crop feeding have become cheaper, and only Russian urea was almost 12 percent cheaper at the end of January compared to December last year, the Product Exchange in Novi Sad announced recently. Following the forums of farmers, who are currently in the phase of purchasing fertilizers, especially for the important feeding of wheat in February, we learn that many of them will not buy, let alone throw larger quantities on the fields. And less fertilizer means less yield.

According to the data of the Republic Institute of Statistics from November 2022, the price of mineral fertilizers in Serbia increased by as much as 126 percent in one year. Therefore, the farmer’s calculation shows that fertilizer is still expensive compared to previous seasons and that with the current purchase price of grain (which is falling) it would be acceptable for it to cost half as much.

– It is very logical that the use of fertilizers has been decreasing recently. In conversation with some farmers, we can hear that they cannot use as much fertilizer as necessary. We always advise them that some minimum must be used depending on the planned amount of yield. But some are not able to, so they reduce it by a certain percentage – Biljana Sikirić, from the Land Institute in Belgrade, told Politika. According to her, for wheat, nitrogen fertilization is necessary, at least two to three times at the end of winter, beginning of spring.

The situation is similar in the world and in Europe. Bloomberg recently reported that falling costs could encourage farmers to start applying more fertilizer again, boosting production, which would also have the effect of lowering food costs for consumers who have also been hit by historic inflation.

However, it is reported that fertilizer sales are still weaker globally as farmers avoid exposure to high costs while the prices of their products are uncertain. Due to the lower price of natural gas, which is the main raw material for the production of nitrogen fertilizers, their further decline is expected in the first half of the year, which was recently predicted by Rabobank’s agricultural experts.

Despite the drop in sales and export sanctions, in the first ten months of 2022, fertilizer deliveries brought the Russian budget 16.7 billion dollars (70 percent more than in the same period last year, with sales falling by 10 percent), announced in the middle of this month “Financial Times”, whose analysts attribute this situation to the increase in fertilizer prices due to the conflict in Ukraine.

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