Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he plans to take to help support UK-based innovation in fertiliser development in the context of the proposed UK-EU agreement on agri-food.

There are significant opportunities for innovation in the fertiliser sector, particularly development of newer types of fertilising products and production processes that improve nutrient use efficiency, which are made from clean energy or recycled nutrients from other materials.

Novel fertilisers have been in scope of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, including within the Programme’s £15 million nutrient management competition, and successful applicants to this competition started their projects earlier this year. We welcome the announcement within the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy to allocate at least £200 million to the Programme up to 2030 which will offer targeted funding to drive innovation in agriculture.

Recently Defra has launched the Accelerating Development of Practices and Technologies Fund (ADOPT) as part of the above Farming Innovation Programme, committing up to £20.6 million of funding in 25/26 to support the introduction of innovative technologies aimed at improving productivity, resilience and sustainability.

Fertiliser product regulation does not fall within the scope of the UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement.