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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the need for security of supply of potash minerals.

Defra has not made an assessment of the security of supply of potash minerals. The UK currently has one domestic mine for supply and therefore depends on some imports. Import statistics provided to Defra by the Agriculture Industries Confederation show that 135,000 tonnes of straight potash fertilisers and 389,000 tonnes of potash-containing compound fertilisers were imported into the UK from a wide range of EU and non-EU countries in the 12 months to March 2015 making up approximately 40% of UK consumption.