Why it matters

Fertiliser sits at the centre of a system under pressure.

Food security depends on productive agriculture. The same system carries an enormous land, climate and water footprint. Better nutrient delivery is one practical place to change the equation.

The scale of the challenge

Five numbers worth holding in the same frame.

Agriculture is essential. Its footprint is also too large to treat nutrient efficiency, resource recovery and resilient supply as side issues.

78%

of global eutrophication

is attributed to agriculture through nutrient enrichment of oceans and freshwater systems.

Our World in Data
Aerial view of Australian cropping land surrounding a river system
Agriculture, productive land and waterways are part of the same nutrient system.

Australian fertiliser security

Import reliance is the larger risk. China is one part of it.

Australia’s exposure changes by nutrient. Urea is now an import-dependent, gas-linked supply problem; phosphate has carried substantial China exposure; and potash depends on a small group of overseas producers. Treating all three as one “China problem” obscures where the practical risks actually sit.

100%

Import reliant for urea

The Australian Government describes the country as entirely import reliant for urea fertiliser.

DAFF, 2026
3.7 Mt

Urea imported in 2025

Reported from Australian Bureau of Statistics import data, down 4% from 2024.

GrainGrowers / ABS, 2026

Nitrogen · urea

Current supply is concentrated in the Middle East, not China.

DAFF reports that 62% of Australia’s fertiliser imports come from the Middle East and that much of the remainder still relies on Middle Eastern gas as feedstock. Production outages, gas prices and shipping routes can therefore affect Australian availability and price at the same time.

Australian Government source →

Phosphorus · MAP, DAP and related products

China has been a concentrated phosphate source, but alternatives exist.

A 2021 Productivity Commission study found that almost all Australian imports in the broad phosphatic mineral or chemical fertiliser category came from China. It also identified Morocco, Israel and the Netherlands as alternative global sources. DAFF’s current registered supply-chain list includes phosphate sources in China alongside Morocco, South Korea and the United States.

Productivity Commission, 2021 →DAFF supply chains →

Potassium · potash

Supply is foreign and geographically concentrated elsewhere.

DAFF’s current registered supply-chain list identifies muriate and sulphate of potash sources in Canada, Germany and Israel, including North American export terminals. This is foreign-market exposure, but it is not primarily China exposure.

DAFF registered supply chains →

Sources and scope

Import shares and trade flows change over time. The China finding above comes from the Productivity Commission’s 2021 study and is labelled accordingly; the urea exposure and registered supply-chain information are current Australian Government sources accessed in August 2026.

The nutrient problem

Fertiliser makes modern food production possible. Its losses do not have to be accepted.

Nutrients that miss the crop are more than wasted input cost. Nitrogen can leave the system as nitrous oxide, ammonia or nitrate; phosphorus can move with soil and water. The result is embedded emissions, pressure on waterways and a resource that has to be bought twice.

Where Fenrow acts

A better fertiliser has to solve more than one problem.

Fenrow’s response is deliberately practical: improve where nutrients go, change where they come from, and prove performance before asking a grower to change.

01

Put more into the crop

Release is designed around crop demand so a greater share of every applied kilo can do productive work. The result is tested against the grower’s current program, on their own benches.

02

Recover nutrients already here

Australian nutrient streams are processed into consistent, analysed feedstock, returning useful material to production and reducing reliance on virgin imported inputs.

03

Build resilience into supply

Domestic recovered inputs reduce exposure to concentrated international supply chains, fossil-fuel-linked production costs and global freight disruption.

04

Measure before claiming

Trial thresholds are agreed before testing begins. Quantified efficiency and leachate claims come from trial data, not assumptions carried over from a laboratory or another crop.

Evidence, not decoration

How to interpret these numbers.

These are global system-level figures. They explain the context for Fenrow’s work; they are not claims about the measured performance of a Fenrow product.

Product-level outcomes depend on crop, container, media, irrigation and program design. That is why Fenrow separates independent context from product claims, and why commercial adoption begins with a controlled side-by-side trial.

See the trial protocol →

Turn the big problem into a measured trial.

If nutrient efficiency, local inputs and a cleaner fertiliser cycle matter to your operation, we will start with your current program and define success before the first pot is filled.

Start a trial