Agriculture, crazy prices for fertilisers and high diesel prices

The flare-up in agri-food price lists is no longer a fear, it is a reality. The outpost of price increases are vegetables: tomatoes in heated greenhouses, but also fennels, green asparagus and cauliflowers, recorded increases of more than +30% on the previous month on Monday 20 April. In detail, fennel was up 56%, white cauliflower up 46%, green asparagus up 28% and cherry tomatoes up 27%. This is what emerges from the analysis of wholesale prices of agri-food products, surveyed by the Chambers of Commerce, Wholesale Markets and National Single Commissions and analysed by the Italian Telematic Commodities Exchange (Bmti).

"These are rises," they explain at Bmti, "directly linked to the conflict in the Middle East because they are triggered by rises in the prices of fertilisers (20 per cent of the world's supply transits through the Strait of Hormuz) and those of fuels. According to Bmti, the quotations for urea (one of the most popular fertilisers) have risen by 75.6% since the beginning of the conflict, with prices more than doubling (+120%) compared to a year ago. "A surge," they add at Bmti, "that fuels fears for the upcoming sowing of cereal crops, especially maize and rice.

The impact of fuel pricesi is still limited, but in the case of winter vegetables such as fennel, cauliflower and tomatoes it has left its mark because these are products grown in greenhouse, diesel-heated greenhouses.

"We are not yet at the levels of 2022," commented the CEO of the Italian Telematic Commodities Exchange, Giulio Montanari, "however, the increases in diesel and fertiliser prices are worrying and will have an impact. We are beginning to see tensions in the prices of our agri-food products. The continuous price monitoring that Bmti carries out tells us, for example, that in the fruit and vegetable sector, increases have been observed for some greenhouse products that are linked not only to rising energy costs, but also to the impact of the adverse weather in Sicily in the first two months of the year. Similarly, the livestock sector is also seeing significant increases compared to last year: this is the case, for example, for beef, chicken meat and eggs'.

In the wake of rising fuel prices, Bmti's findings include the rise recorded by seed oils (about +10.6% in one week), a product used both for food and as a biofuel.