To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs what steps his Department has taken to help address the impact of rising fertiliser prices on food production.

Northern Ireland producers are facing unprecedented rises in input costs, in particular fertiliser. We continue to monitor the impacts on farm businesses and have a range of mitigation actions in place.

The ‘Rising Cost Taskforce’ (led by College of Agriculture Food and Rural Enterprise with cross industry representation) continues to ensure the consistency of advisory messages and provides practical help and support. It has recently completed a follow-up survey of farm businesses and the information gathered is helping to inform targeted messaging over the winter months. Further practical information sessions to consider the continuing increasing input costs will be delivered by my officials over the winter months.

I recognise that there continues to be volatility in the market and the overall situation remains difficult given the scale of the input cost rises. To help assist our local agri-industry with cash flow, I issued full Direct Payments of £286.9million to 97% of eligible applicants, 6 weeks earlier from 1 September 2022.

I am encouraged by the very successful uptake of the £45 million Soil Nutrient Health Scheme that I launched earlier this year. The scheme will provide nutrient information to farmers on every field they farm and will ensure better matching of nutrient inputs to crop needs and will raise the quantity and quality of grass, which remains the cheapest form of feed.

My Officials continue to have significant ongoing engagement with industry stakeholders, Defra, other devolved administrations and the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (ROI) on those cross-cutting issues relating to reducing the impacts of volatility in price and supply of key industry inputs.

I continue to engage regularly with UK Government at a senior level and drive home the importance of national collaboration on dealing with the impacts of the Ukraine crisis on our agri-food industry and future food security. I have written to and met with the former Secretary of State, Rt Hon George Eustice MP on a number of occasions to reiterate my concerns regarding the unprecedented increases in input costs which is impacting the agricultural sector across all of the UK. I have restated those concerns to the new Secretary of State for DEFRA, Ranil Jayawardena MP and requested an urgent meeting.