ECOFI welcomes the Commission’s recent publication of its Roadmap for the Revision of the Fertilisers Regulation and the recognition of the barriers currently preventing organic-based fertilisers from having access to a single European market.

As noted in the Roadmap, organic fertilisers currently face a major disadvantage in competitiveness compared to inorganic fertilisers, and correcting this imbalance is critical to move towards more sustainable agriculture and the Circular Economy. Organic fertilisers will help to ensure food security by enhancing resource use efficiency, using and recycling renewable resources, and fostering jobs and growth in the burgeoning bioeconomy.

The organic-based fertilizer industry as a whole reaffirms its ongoing commitment to working with policy-makers to find optimal regulatory solutions.

With that in mind, and with a view to ensuring coherence between the future revised Fertilisers Regulation, ECOFI urges the European Commission and Member States to bear the following points in mind while finalizing the future regulation:

• The need to ensure transparency throughout the chain from recuperating wastes to incorporation into a fertilising material;
• The need to ensure high levels of quality and safety, and understanding the interplay between them. Standards for contaminants should consider the ratio between contaminants and nutrients in a given product to prevent large quantities of contaminants being spread on EU soils with a minimum of nutrients;
• The need for products standards to be expressed on the label in terms that are useful for farmers, both in agronomic terms and with regard to their policy obligations;
• The urgent need for EFSA to evaluate a number of national methods currently used to transform animal by-products into fertiliser-grade materials and to elevate all viable candidates to EU- approval to facilitate access to the single market under the future regulation;
• The importance of creating a single market for all relevant products – including organo-mineral fertilisers – in order to benefit from the full range of innovation the industry can offer.

If these provisions can be met, organic-based fertilisers will be well placed to contribute fully to the Circular Economy in line with the expectations expressed in the Roadmap.