Fertilizer Law amendment: Opportunity for managing nutrients more efficiently

On 6 November 2023, the Bundestag Committee on Food and Agriculture held a public hearing on the draft of the Second Amending of the Fertilizer Law. The Thünen Institute was invited as an expert and commented on the issues of impact monitoring and substance flow analysis. In the view of the Thünen Institute, both measures are useful in order to reduce nutrient pollution of water bodies and to be able to check whether and how measures work. The latter is the prerequisite for a differentiation of measures according to the polluter.

In addition, the amendment to the law aligns the rules for the approval and use of fertilizers with EU law. According to Thünen scientists Maximilian Zinnbauer, Bernhard Osterburg, Philipp Löw and Peter Weingarten, the proposed legislation creates the basis for a "reliable, polluter-pays and relatively low-bureaucracy fertilizer law".

The impact monitoring serves to determine nationwide and according to a uniform methodology how the Fertilizer Ordinance influences the quality of water bodies. The European Court of Justice had condemned Germany because it did not comply with the EU Nitrate Directive. In response, Germany promised to the European Commission to implement the monitoring. "It is an important prerequisite for being able to differentiate future measures in a way that is appropriate to the polluter and location and to justify them to the European Commission," says Maximilian Zinnbauer, who participated in the hearing in the Agricultural Committee.

The second important cornerstone of the new law is the further development of the substance flow analysis. This approach allows for a detailed determination of the nitrogen flows of a farm or a biogas plant. The precise knowledge helps farmers to fertilize more efficiently. This not only reduces the contamination of groundwater, rivers and seas, but also contributes to overall climate protection and air quality.

The exact impact of the legislative amendment depends on how the Ordinance on Substance Flow Analysis is specifically adjusted and how the monitoring ordinance is designed. The Thünen Institute will be involved in the impact monitoring.