Russian farmers to significantly increase fertilizer purchases by 2030

Russia’s Ministry of Agriculture expects that the country’s agricultural producers will purchase at least eight million tonnes of mineral fertilizers per year by 2030, local media reported on Wednesday, citing Roman Nekrasov, the director of the department for crop production, mechanization, chemicalization, and plant protection.

According to the Finmarket news site, Mr. Nekrasov told attendees at a fertilizer conference in the city of Perm that ‘If in 2017 we purchased just over three million tonnes of mineral fertilizers . . . then in 2022 we reached the level of 5.2 million tonnes and continue to increase the purchase of mineral fertilizers.’

He predicted that the volume of purchases will increase by roughly three million tonnes by the end of the decade.

Mr. Nekrasov also reportedly said that Russia currently uses just over 60 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare and therefore ‘lags very seriously behind the world’s leading agricultural powers’, which are using more than 300 kilograms per sown hectare.

He is quoted as saying, however, that application methods will improve and that new products will appear. He added that Russia is gradually becoming agriculturally self-sufficient, and, in the process, opening up new global export opportunities.