The chief executive of Yara International, Europe's largest fertilizer producer, warned the bloc is quickly "sleepwalking" into over-dependence on Russian fertilizers. This caution comes as Yara significantly reduced its production last year. Additionally, radicals in Brussels are advancing a green agenda that could undermine Europe's stability long before it achieves its climate change objectives.
"Fertilizer is the new gas," CEO Svein Tore Holsether told the Financial Times in an interview, adding, "It is a paradox that the aim is to reduce Europe's dependency on Russia, and then now we are sleepwalking into handing over critical food and fertilizing power to Russia."
To cut Europe's reliance on cheap natural gas from Russia, it only took a highly secret CIA operation with assistance from an elite Norwegian intelligence unit to blow up the Russia-Germany Nord Stream pipeline, according to legendary journalist Seymour Hersh.
The good news: There are no undersea or underground fertilizer pipelines for Western intelligence agencies to sabotage as Washington's financial war against Moscow heats up.
A significant problem facing European farmers is sourcing cheap fertilizers domestically. Severing cheap NatGas flows from Russia to Germany has ruined Europe's largest economy, and the bloc's fertilizer industry struggles to survive. Germany can thank the Americans for that one.
So why is Holsether complaining about Russia's fertilizer dominance in EU markets while Yara reduced its ammonia production capacity by 19% in 2023, or 890,000 tons, and its finished fertilizer production capacity by 15%? By the end of the year, about 58% of its European ammonia capacity was idled.
Holsether noted that Russian fertilizer imports are taking a more significant market share because of low-cost Russian producers.
If Europe tries to rejigger fertilizer sourcing away from Russia, expect another round of food inflation to hit the poorest European consumers. Western neocon warmongering fools have thrown the West into an inflation mess. Their financial war against Russia, that is, sanction after sanction, has yet to paralyze Moscow but only backfired with inflation.
