From January 2026, Spanish farmers will face increases in production costs of between forty euros per hectare in the best case and one hundred euros in the worst case, according to an estimate by the agricultural organization Unión de Uniones. This new … The blow to a sector already facing narrow profit margins is explained by the effect that the entry into force of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will have on the price of fertilizers, a new tax created by the European Commission which will tax imports of raw materials based on the carbon emissions generated during their production.
It is true that the EU will only start collecting the tax in 2027, but it will do so based on the CO2 emitted during the previous year, so it is to be expected that companies will pass on the additional costs to their customers in advance, Juan Pardo, president of the Spanish Fertilizer Trade Association (ACEF), explains to ABC.
To contextualize the impact this may have on certain crops, let’s take as an example cereals, which are currently facing a price collapse after closing this year’s campaign with a record production of 26.64 million tonnes (according to the latest estimate from Agro-Food Cooperatives), this figure is 21.4% higher than in 2024 and, in fact, it is the second best in history.
According to Asaja data, in provinces like Córdoba this has placed the market below 200 euros per ton, a figure that does not even cover production costs which can reach 280 euros/t in some cases; and the same goes for the other major grain-producing regions of our country.
The fact is that a good part of this imbalance is explained by the increase in the cost of fertilizers, an essential raw material for agricultural production and which is lacking in Europe. The EU imports up to 50% of these inputs from third countriesa dependence aggravated by Brussels’ sanctions against Russia, which produces up to 20% of the fertilizers used by Spanish farmers.
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60%
Current EU fertilizer stocks cover just over half of next year’s needs
The fact is that, in this context and while the Old Continent’s reserves of synthetic fertilizers are around 60% of next year’s needs (according to data from Copa-Cogeca, the association which brings together all the agricultural organizations of the Old Continent), the community executive intends to overwhelm the MAFC slab campaigns.
And “as incredible as it may seem”, underlines Copa-Cogeca in a press release, a few days before the release of the levy, the Commission has not yet specified some of the criteria it will use to calculate it, so that agricultural organizations can only estimate how it will affect them. From Copa-Cogeca they emphasize that some estimates put the additional cost at an additional 10-15% on the current price of subscriptions, and others, even by more than 30%. This is not nothing since the start of the war in Ukraine, fertilizers have become more expensive to the point that they now represent between 15 and 20% of the total production cost of the European primary sector. Along the same lines, Juan Pardo explains that among input importers there are still “big doubts” about the potential effects of this tax, but it coincides with farmers’ estimates.
For our country, the Union of Trade Unions predicts an economic impact of between 1,500 and 6,000 million euros. This tax could be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back”, they warn in a press release, for sectors whose economic viability is already compromised, such as cereals, corn, sugar beet, fodder or certain intensive horticultural production.
Even if this agricultural organization claims to defend an ambitious climate policy, it regrets that in this case the community executive has designed a new regulatory framework without impact studies. “Brussels is already getting into the habit of shooting itself in the foot,” they conclude.
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