European food security is at risk from well-meaning, but problematic regulations representing elements of the European Union’s Circular Economy Package 2018. While capping cadmium content in phosphate fertilisers is being touted as a matter of public health, the absence of supporting science, incoherent policy, and the hazardous market consequences are being negligently overlooked. Partially to blame may be the misleading arguments pushed by environmental and industrial lobbies.
The European Union (EU) is increasingly dependent on non-member countries supplying its various needs. When it comes to vital fertiliser, the EU depends on imports for approximately 85% of its phosphate (P2O5). In 2017 most phosphate came from Morocco (1.8Mt), Russia (1.6Mt), Algeria (0.7Mt), Israel, and South Africa. Phosphate is crucial to industrial food production. The fewer phosphate exporters to the EU there are the less competition there is: prices will inevitably rise as a result.
The restrictions proposed in the EU aim to limit the amount of cadmium permitted in phosphate fertilisers. Cadmium is a toxic heavy metal. Present as an impurity in phosphate, it can enter crops and soil through fertilisers. As part of the Circular Economy Package, the Commission proposed an initial cadmium limit of 60mg/kg P2O5, for three years, sliding down to 40mg/kg after nine years, and 20mg/kg after 12 years.
The European Parliament has suggested a final limit of 20mg/kg P2O5 after 12 years while the EU Council’s initial position is a limit of 60mg/kg P2O5 after 8 years.
As a quirk of geology, the phosphate rocks extracted in different regions have differing levels of impurities, like cadmium. This means that the lower the upper limit, the fewer territories that can realistically supply viable phosphate. Notably, at present the phosphate industry maintains that decadmiation is neither technologically nor financially possible.
Problems with the science
Crucially, the science that various EU authorities believe supports their position is hotly contested. The Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER), confirmed there was no accumulation of cadmium in soils when fertilisers have an average of 80 mg/kg P2O5, revised to 73mg/kg P2O5 after taking into account new worst-case scenarios. In either case, this is above the limits pushed by the EU authorities, and the difference between the SCHER average figure and the EU maximum limit is equally significant.
“There is substantial uncertainty with respect to the effects of cadmium in fertilizer on cadmium accumulations in humans,” argue agricultural economists Justus Wessler and Dušan Drabik. According to their findings “cadmium concentration in soils in the EU is declining” and therefore “maximum limits on cadmium, voluntary or mandatory, will increase cost without generating additional benefits,”.
These findings are echoed by researchers for the Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT), who conclude that the “use of P
[phosphate]
fertiliser at current levels will not lead to soil accumulation of cadmium, and thus there will be no increase human exposure to cadmium.”
Even the European Commission’s own impact assessment found that “on average, cadmium accumulation is not likely to occur in EU 27 + Norway arable soils when using inorganic phosphate fertiliser containing less than 80 mg Cd/kg P2O5.”
How is the policy causing harm to farmers?
While the regulation may be based on largely unsupported health concerns, the effects of the change will be very real for EU farmers, EU fertiliser producers, and the wider European agri-food industry.
Limitations on the concentrations of cadmium permitted in phosphate fertilisers will ultimately reduce the number of viable suppliers of fertiliser products, and therefore, reduce market competition. Farmers and industry insiders believe that this will raise prices for fertiliser products, which are already an expensive overhead.
Fertilisers currently comprise a significant percentage of EU farmers input costs. Many feel that they will not be able to cope with increased prices, as they often already receive insufficient returns for their products. The European farmers’s interest group COPA and COGECA has argued that “the increase in input costs will be detrimental [to farmers’s]…economic viability and to the sustainability of farms.”
“It will have a negative impact on farmers profitability and the competitiveness of European agriculture which plays a key role in a global economy,” the group also said.
Isabel García Tejerina is a Spanish minister who opposed the proposals for cadmium limitations out of consideration to Spanish farmers and fertiliser producers. Tejerina argued that the regulation demonstrated disregard for farmers interests.
“Too strict cadmium limits would exclude us from the market of phosphate fertilizers”, she said, adding that France and the UK have similar concerns.
While there are limits on cadmium content in fertilisers in order to reduce its consumption, there are currently no limits on cadmium content in food products imported from outside of the EU. This is another source of anger as farmers fear that it could facilitate unfair competition.
