Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the financial impact of delaying the changes to the use of urea by one year on the farming sector in England.

Global fertiliser prices including urea and ammonium nitrate have more than trebled compared to fertiliser prices this time last year, due to key input costs of natural gas. Prior to the onset of these increases we estimated that adding a urease inhibitor to urea fertilisers will increase the cost of urea by around 10% and the overall annual average cost of this new requirement to be around £8.3m in England (to farmers under the Red Tractor scheme in England). Delaying the changes to urea during this time allows farmers to have broader choice in the fertiliser they use and to take advantage of any differences in price between urea and ammonium nitrate, and shores up supply chains.