Friday December 24th 2021
As a result of the fertilizer crisis
Food prices could rise massively
The rising energy prices are also causing the cost of artificial fertilizers to explode. The World Food Organization fears devastating consequences: While Germany has to be prepared for significantly more expensive vegetables, entire harvests could be affected in poorer countries.
The World Food Organization (FAO) warns of dramatically rising food prices as a result of exploding costs for artificial fertilizers and pesticides. “If the energy prices continue to rise, the prices for fertilizers, pesticides and fuels go up – and later also the food prices,” said Josef Schmidhuber, deputy director of the FAO Markets and Trade Division, the “Spiegel”.
As a result of the recent sharp rise in the price of natural gas, various nitrogen fertilizers have already increased in price by leaps and bounds. The basic fertilizer material ammonia, which is obtained using large amounts of natural gas, costs around 300 euros in normal times in Western Europe, as the newspaper reports. Now it is more than three times as much: a historic record. Because of the ammonia shortage, large fertilizer manufacturers had to shut down factories.
If the natural gas market does not relax again soon, “we have a really big problem,” said Schmidhuber to “Spiegel”. Vegetables will become more expensive in Germany. In poor countries, harvests could even shrink because many farmers can no longer afford the fertilizer.
Even before the fertilizer crisis, food had become massively more expensive worldwide. According to the Food Price Index of the World Food Organization, prices have skyrocketed by an average of 27 percent in the past twelve months – mainly due to droughts and floods. The consequences of the fertilizer crisis are hardly included. According to “Spiegel”, the FAO now fears a further rise in prices.