The potato growers from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador Canadian Atlantic region provinces said that their operating costs expanded considerably with fertilizer imports from Russia under sanction, and some are looking for alternatives.

For example, the cultivar farmers from New Brunswick’s New Denmark rural community recently declared for CBC that they paid about USD700 per ton of fertilizer last year and that the new quote would be about USD1,300 per tonne this year. As a result, the spud growers estimated that their average operating costs overall should increase by over 60% in 2022.

Consequently, farmers in these regions have had to look for alternative solutions to common fertilizers or limit their intake. Known as residuals, these are often made out of by-products from other industries, including wood ash, fish bones, seashells, and seaweed.

The Atlantic provinces rely heavily on fertilizer imports from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Deciders from the Canadian fertilizer manufacturing market recently declared for the above-mentioned mass-media source that about 85 to 90% of all nitrogen fertilizers used in the eastern provinces come from Russia. Sanctions currently imposed on this country have hindered the availability of these materials, including potash, nitrogen, and phosphorus across Canada.

About 30 to 40 shipments of fertilizer were already en route to Canada when the sanctions were imposed on Russia. But only those that had already reached Canadian waters were allowed to dock and the rest had a more dire fate.

The Canadian fertilizers manufacturers support the sanctions put in place by Canada and its allies, but they do affect the supply and price of fertilizer. The fertilizer sector contributes about USD23bn to the economy each year, according to Fertilizer Canada, cited by the same mass-media source.