(USAgNet.com) – The United Nations is pushing to cut the price of fertilizers to avoid a “future crisis” of availability, said a senior U.N. trade official who is involved in talks aimed at boosting the export of Russian fertilizers, including ammonia.

Reuters reports that Russia’s war in Ukraine has fueled a global food crisis and soaring fertilizer prices. Russia and Ukraine are key global exporters of grain, while Russia is also one of the largest exporters of fertilizers.

“If we are not able to bring fertilizer prices down, the crisis of affordability that we have today will be a crisis of availability tomorrow, and that is what we are working on right now,” said Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). “To avert a future crisis we need to bring fertilizer prices down,” she told reporters in Geneva.

Russia is one of the world’s largest suppliers of potash, phosphate and nitrogen fertilisers – key crop and soil nutrients – producing 13% of the global total. Fertilizer exports from Russia fell by 7% in the first half of 2022.

Facilitating Russia’s food and fertilizer exports is a central aspect of a package deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkey on July 22 that also restarted Ukraine’s Black Sea grain and fertilizer shipments. Russia has criticized the deal, complaining that its exports were still hindered.

The deal included ammonia – a key ingredient in nitrate fertilizer. A pipeline transporting ammonia from Russia’s Volga region to Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi (Yuzhny) was shut down when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

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