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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to GrassCheck GB data for the week of 13 June 2022, what recent assessment he has made of the potential need for securing reasonably priced chemical fertiliser to help increase domestic grass yields.

While global fertiliser prices have risen and this is undoubtedly a challenging period for our agricultural sectors, the supply chain providing imports of fertiliser to the UK has remained resilient. Within the domestic market, CF Fertilisers continues to produce ammonium nitrate fertiliser from their plant at Billingham.

Through our UK Agricultural Market Monitoring Group we are monitoring a range of data around input costs, grass yields and production levels. We have also recently expanded our engagement with industry, to supplement our data with live intelligence We have also established a ministerial-led fertiliser Taskforce to more closely monitor the fertiliser market. More information about the latest work of the Taskforce is available at the following link.

The latest from the Fertiliser Taskforce - Future Farming (blog.gov.uk)

To reflect the challenges the industry is facing, we have already announced a number of measures to support growers at this time. These include delays to the introduction of restrictions to the use of urea fertiliser, further details of the Sustainable Farming Incentive Scheme and the bringing forward of half of this year's Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) payment to July as an advance injection of cash to farm businesses.