The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced this Monday the new State Fertilizer Plan, a strategy that the Executive expects to finalize in the first quarter of 2027 and which includes specific resources, a defined timeline, and concrete measures for Spain to produce more and better, decrease its external dependence, and strengthen food security.
"We are launching this plan, which is very important for the sector, so that Spain, hand in hand with the other authorities and hand in hand with the sector, produces more and better, but also does so by reducing its dependence and we can more effectively support those who guarantee our food security," Sánchez assured at an event held in San Martín de la Vega (Madrid).
During his speech, the head of the Executive pointed out that the interministerial working group responsible for coordinating the plan is already operational and that a dialogue process with all competent administrations and stakeholders will soon be opened, with the aim of it being "ready" in the first quarter of 2027.
The plan is structured around three priority axes. The first is the promotion of precision agriculture, aimed at cutting costs and improving the profitability of farms. The second focuses on strengthening strategic autonomy to reduce external dependence. "We are not going to close ourselves off, but we do need to reduce dependence on energy sources that are not ours; it is about choosing to transform agricultural transformation to gain strategic autonomy and be sovereign from an agricultural point of view," he explained.
The third pillar is transparency in price formation, through the creation of an information system on the fertilizer market that allows for anticipating possible imbalances, detecting tensions, and reacting quickly to inflationary episodes like those recently experienced.
In this context, Sánchez announced that the first list of 425,000 beneficiaries of aid for the purchase of fertilizers has been published, for an amount exceeding 600 million euros, as part of the measures derived from the war in Iran. In addition, he recalled that last Monday the Council of Ministers approved an increase of 165 million euros in the fund allocated to the acquisition of fertilizers.
"In total, we have mobilized more than 1.1 billion euros in aid to the primary sector to alleviate this crisis, a figure that is more than double the European average. In addition, we continue to support measures that are already working. With the second Royal Decree of response, we practically doubled aid per hectare, maintained the 20-cent discount per liter of diesel A, and consolidated the specific ICO Line, with up to 300 million euros for financing," he recalled.
The President of the Government emphasized the need to offer a "structural response to cyclical challenges, with transformations towards a more sustainable, more efficient, and less externally dependent agriculture." "I believe that this is how we protect the primary sector, farmers and ranchers with facts and not just with words," he indicated.
"It is a plan about a transition that we must all face together and that must be fair, thinking especially of farmers and ranchers so that we have fair prices and, of course, also more vibrant towns, because rural Spain is not a periphery of progress, it is one of its backbone columns, because it is the one that produces, feeds, and protects our territory, preserving our diversity," he stressed.
Planas supports the state fertilizer plan
For his part, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, pointed out that the agricultural sector faces a "very important challenge" regarding fertilizers, whose cost has skyrocketed by 60% since the beginning of the war in Ukraine and has increased by more than 30% with the conflict in the Middle East.
The minister valued that the Government has made a "very important sum" available to the countryside to mitigate that impact and defended the need to move towards a more efficient use of fertilizers. "There is no sustainability if there is no profitability, and we agree that this profitability gives us the guarantee of the future of production," he stressed.
Planas insisted that this state fertilizer plan constitutes the "Spanish contribution to European action." "This fertilizer plan perfectly designs the short, medium, and long term. The European Commission fell short in the short term, but the Government of Spain has been there to carry out this task, which is absolutely necessary for the future," he stressed.