Circular and biobased solutions stood front and centre in the EU’s security agenda this week after agriculture commissioner EU Christophe Hansen called on the bloc to increase its use of manure-based fertilisers.
This championing of circular fertiliser is part of EU efforts to reduce dependence on Russian agricultural inputs after rolling out new sanctions on them. We look at why the EU is prioritising circular fertilisers now, the geostrategic context for Hansen’s call to action, and key producers that may benefit.
The EU’s fertiliser problem
The EU put import tariffs on nitrogen-based fertilisers from Russia for the first time this week in its 16th round of sanctions on the country.
The move came after years of concern in the bloc about how much its food security depends on Russian nitrogen and how this would narrow its strategic freedom in any geopolitical conflagration. By the end of 2024, the EU was getting a quarter of its extra-EU fertiliser imports from Russia.
These concerns became a reality after the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Russia was no longer producing as much fertiliser as it used to while farmers in Europe panic-bought supplies. In November, the situation was urgent enough for the European Commission to release a communication for farmers on how to cut back and optimise their use while still securing normal yields. By 2023 Europe announced that the fertiliser market had reached a ‘critical level’ where farmers are facing ‘unprecedented challenges due to record prices’.
EU finally sanctions Russian fertiliser
Because of its dependence, the EU had avoided targeting Russian fertiliser as part of its sanctions war until now, continuing to buy these critical products even while sanctioning other imports like oil.
The EU’s decision to finally restrict Russian fertiliser imports was prompted by the unintended consequences of its earlier sanctions. After the EU restricted its purchases of Russian gas in 2024, Russia simply diverted the fuel to produce more fertiliser, shipping it into the EU where its cheap products found a ready market. The EU now seeks to close off this revenue source to the Kremlin.
The EU fertiliser sanctions will mainly affect two inputs: urea and ammonia. Russian urea, which makes up a third of European supply, is used widely as a nitrogen fertiliser, which increases crop yields. Ammonia is a feedstock for producing nitrogen-based fertilisers like urea as well as being an emerging fuel source.
In the absence of cheap Russian fertiliser alternative sources will have to be found alongside demand optimisation. Russian fertiliser imports would have to be partly replaced with domestic fertiliser made from easily-sourced sources like manure. The EU simply does not have the cheap natural gas it would need to produce its own synthetic nitrogen fertiliser on the scale Russia does.
A history of plant nutrient R&D
The decision to impose tariffs on Russian fertiliser could herald new waves of policy support for EU biobased and circular industries.
Europe has a strong track record on R&D in recovering plant nutrients from manure, spending considerable sums on waste-to-fertiliser pathways since the 2010s onwards. Fertimnaure is an EU funded project that ended last year, focused on developing and testing mineral recovery from animal manure. Its final outcome was to demonstrate its waste-to-manure processing methods and tech at a Dutch pilot farm.
Manurerefinery, an ongoing EU project that will last until 2028, is developing modular small-scale and decentralised biorefineries that can convert manure into biobased feed and fertiliser in rural areas. The new sanctions could now provide some impetus for translating these R&D projects into wide scale capacity.
Europe’s organic fertiliser producers
The latest sanctions will almost certainly benefit existing organic fertiliser producers in Europe. Many are smaller, producing a wide range of fertilisers that blend organic and mineral materials together. These include FRAYSSINET (France), Ilsa Spa (Italy), Culterra (Holland), and Angibaud (France). Organic fertiliser is diverse and manure is not the only feedstock for making it. Ilsa Spa for example specialises in extracting nutrients from plant or animal matter using enzymes.
Then there are nutrient recovery companies that specialise in recovering highly concentrated nutrients from waste streams. These include Amfer of the Netherlands, which claims to recover between half and 80% of the ammonia from the manure and slurry it treats. Since 2021, it has operated three full-scale plants: two in the Netherlands treating up to 30, 000 tonnes per year of digestate (a processed version of manure) and one in the UK treating up to 170, 000 tonnes per year.
EasyMining is another company that recovers agricultural inputs from waste. Their Aqua2™ treatment process removes ammonium nitrogen from wastewater using chemicals. THen, the ammonium nitrogen is converted into ammonium salt. The process has a reduced climate impact compared to traditional fertiliser production, which contributes significantly to the food system’s environmental footprint.
There are also startups pioneering the niche of nutrient recovery from human waste. Finland’s NPHarvest is one of them. It deploys a membrane system it calls the ‘nutrient catcher’ to retrieve plant nutrients from wastewater – an innovation it claims cuts operating costs by removing the need to use heating or high-pressure conditions to treat the waste. The membrane system is designed to plug-into biogas plants, agricultural operations, or municipal wastewater plants.
The biggest producers of organic fertilisers in Europe however are Yara (Norway) and K+S Aktiengesellschaft (Germany), both among the top fertiliser manufacturers in the world. K+S makes organic fertiliser alongside its traditional line of mined plant nutrients. They currently sell 25 organic farming-certified products.
Yara is Europe’s largest fertiliser producer and market, including specifically for the nitrogen fertilisers that will be hit by sanctions. The company produces fertiliser products made up of both organic and mineral material.
Expanding its organic production capacity has been part of the company strategy since at least 2021, when Yara acquired the Finnish organic-based fertiliser producer Ecolan. In 2023, it acquired another organic fertiliser producer, this time in Italy, Agribios Italiana.
Cleaning up livestock pollution
Apart from security, biobased and circular fertiliser can reduce the environmental impacts of farming.
For some in the EU, market demand for manure cannot grow quickly enough. There are parts of Europe where animal waste has piled up to unsustainable levels, especially in the Netherlands and in Belgium which has some of the most intensive agricultural systems in the region.
Like synthetic fertilisers, the nutrients in livestock manure can clog rural environments with pollution, unbalancing aquatic ecosystems by encouraging algal blooms that suffocate other lifeforms. Untreated manure also releases various greenhouse gases, contributing to global emissions. Bigger demand for organic fertiliser could be the most effective way to stop this waste backlog.
The EU agriculture sector contributed 15.2% of total global agricultural emissions in 2021. Over the long-term the only way that Europe would meet its production needs while reducing the substantial planetary impact of agricultural production is to shift towards greater use of organic fertiliser. In this way the fertiliser supply chain impacts of the Ukraine war only sped up policy initiatives already in motion in Europe agriculture’s environmental impacts.
Manure needs scaling to offer a real alternatives
In moving away from Russian fertiliser supply, the EU now faces a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, it wants to inflict damage on the Russian economy through its sanctions. Yet discouraging European farmers from purchasing cheap Russian fertiliser and encouraging them to buy more expensive domestic fertiliser will be politically contentious.
Relations between the farming sector and the EU are currently fraught. With margins squeezed by war and inflation, farmers groups across Europe have emerged as a potent political force campaigning against green regulations and for more support to enact sustainability regulations. To offer a real alternative that is affordable for the region’s farmers and consumers, manure-based fertiliser will still need to scale substantially.
Long-term support for circular fertiliser scale-up and other aspects of the agricultural sustainability transition will be needed from the EU if the bloc is to earn the political backing of farmers, a key constituent in the fight for a sustainable and food secure future.
The bloc also needs a comprehensive strategy melding agricultural and envrionmental targets – the science of fertilisers shows how critically entwined these areas are, given that soil health is fundamental in determining the efficacy of organic plant nutrients.
The EU will have to back its sanctions strategy with resources and clear policy for the framing and fertiliser sectors, supporting the former in making transition to circular inputs while helping the biobased production deliver renewable, domestically produced goods at lower prices.
