Brazil's Fertilizer Gamble: The Dependency That Feeds the World and Starves Itself of Options

Brazil imports approximately 85 percent of the fertilizer it uses. This single number defines the country's position in any global fertilizer disruption. It also defines a significant share of the world's food security, because Brazil is the largest exporter of soybeans, the second-largest exporter of corn, and a major source of sugar, coffee, and cotton. When Brazilian agriculture falters, global supply chains register it within months. The 2022 fertilizer crisis tested this dependency. Four years later, almost nothing has changed.

The Scale of Dependency

The numbers are not ambiguous. Brazil consumed roughly 45 million tonnes of fertilizers in 2023, making it the fourth-largest consumer globally behind China, India, and the United States. Of this volume, domestic production covered only about 15 percent across the three major nutrient categories: nitrogen, phosphate, and potash.

For potash, the dependency is most extreme. Brazil imports more than 95 percent of its potash requirements, with Russia and Belarus historically supplying around 30 percent of that total. For nitrogen fertilizers, the country relies heavily on imports from the Middle East, North Africa, and Russia. For phosphates, domestic production from Mossoró and other facilities covers a larger share, but still falls short of demand.

This import profile means that Brazil is simultaneously exposed to every major fertilizer-producing region. A disruption in the Black Sea region, the Persian Gulf, or North Africa hits Brazilian agriculture directly. In 2022, all three were stressed at the same time.

What Happened in 2022

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Brazil's agricultural sector faced an immediate supply anxiety that went beyond price. The question was not only how much fertilizer would cost but whether physical volumes would arrive.

Russian fertilizer exports to Brazil were not formally sanctioned by the Brazilian government. Brazil maintained its trade relationship with Russia throughout the crisis, a decision driven by agricultural pragmatism rather than geopolitical alignment. Even so, shipping logistics, insurance complications, and payment processing disruptions created real uncertainty.

Fertilizer prices for Brazilian farmers followed the global spike. Urea prices at Brazilian ports rose from approximately 1,200 reais per tonne in early 2021 to over 4,500 reais per tonne at the peak in 2022. MAP (monoammonium phosphate) and KCl (potassium chloride) followed similar trajectories. The cost increase was absorbed unevenly. Large-scale operations in Mato Grosso and Goiás had contracts and credit lines to manage the shock. Smaller producers in the Cerrado and the South faced tighter margins and, in some cases, reduced application rates.

CNA (Confederação da Agricultura e Pecuária do Brasil) reported that Brazilian farmers spent approximately 30 percent more on fertilizer inputs in the 2022-2023 crop year compared to the previous season. This squeeze coincided with strong commodity prices for soybeans and corn, which partially offset the higher costs. Had commodity prices not been elevated, the financial impact on producers would have been significantly worse.

The Plano Nacional de Fertilizantes

The Brazilian government launched the Plano Nacional de Fertilizantes (PNF) on March 11, 2022, roughly two weeks after the Russian invasion. The timing was not coincidental. The plan set a target of raising domestic production to cover 45 to 50 percent of national demand by 2050, up from roughly 15 percent.

The PNF identified several pathways: expanding domestic mining of potash deposits in the Amazon region (particularly the Autazes project in Amazonas state), increasing phosphate production, developing nitrogen fertilizer capacity linked to Petrobras gas assets, and promoting biological nitrogen fixation technologies such as inoculants for soybeans.

The 2050 timeline itself signals the scale of the challenge. Twenty-eight years to more than triple domestic production is not an emergency response. It is an industrial development plan.

As of early 2026, progress has been limited. The Autazes potash project, operated by Brazil Potash (formerly Potássio do Brasil), remains in the permitting and financing stage. Environmental licensing in the Amazon faces substantial regulatory and political obstacles. No new large-scale nitrogen fertilizer plant has been commissioned. Petrobras, which operated three nitrogen fertilizer plants (FAFEN units) in Bahia, Sergipe, and Paraná, had shut down two of them before the crisis, citing economic unviability. FAFEN-Bahia was reactivated in 2020 but operates below capacity.

Biological inputs have shown more traction. Brazil is already the global leader in soybean inoculant use, with biological nitrogen fixation replacing a significant share of synthetic nitrogen for soy production. Embrapa (the Brazilian agricultural research corporation) has pushed this technology for decades. But inoculants work for legumes, not for corn, sugarcane, or cotton, which still require synthetic nitrogen.

The assessment is clear: the PNF produced a document, not a transformation.

Why Brazil Matters for the World

Brazil's fertilizer dependency is not only a Brazilian problem. The country produces roughly one-third of the world's soybeans and is the second-largest corn exporter. These crops feed livestock in China, Europe, and the Middle East. Disruption to Brazilian soybean production propagates through global protein supply chains within one to two seasons.

In the 2022-2023 season, Brazil produced a record soybean harvest of approximately 154 million tonnes despite the fertilizer cost pressure. This outcome partly reflected the fact that physical supply, while expensive, did not disappear entirely. Farmers paid more but still received deliveries. The question for 2026 is whether a Hormuz disruption would produce a different kind of shortage: not expensive fertilizer, but unavailable fertilizer.

Nearly half of global urea exports originate in the Persian Gulf. If Hormuz remains partially blocked, as current reporting suggests, Brazil loses access to a supply corridor that cannot be easily replaced. The Middle East is the primary source of competitively priced urea and ammonia for the Brazilian market. Alternative sources exist, primarily Trinidad and Tobago, Algeria, and Nigeria, but their export capacity does not match Persian Gulf volumes.

What the Data Shows About Preparation

Four years of data since the 2022 crisis paint a consistent picture. Brazil's fertilizer import dependency has not materially changed. It remains at approximately 85 percent. The domestic production base has not expanded. The PNF's milestone targets for 2025 have not been met.

The country's approach to supply diversification has focused on diplomatic rather than industrial measures. Brazil maintained fertilizer trade with Russia throughout the crisis period and beyond. Brazilian diplomacy actively resisted Western pressure to isolate Russia economically, partly because the fertilizer trade was too important to interrupt.

This diplomatic strategy worked in 2022 because the disruption was primarily geopolitical and logistical rather than physical. Russia wanted to sell, Brazil wanted to buy, and the challenge was navigating sanctions on banking and shipping. A Hormuz disruption is fundamentally different. It is a physical blockage of a shipping corridor. No amount of diplomatic flexibility solves a closed strait.

The Structural Gap

Brazil sits at the intersection of two facts that define its risk exposure. First, it is the most fertilizer-import-dependent major agricultural producer in the world. Second, its agricultural output is systemically important to global food supply. These two facts together mean that a sustained fertilizer supply disruption to Brazil is, by definition, a global food supply event.

The 2022 crisis revealed this vulnerability in detail. The Plano Nacional de Fertilizantes acknowledged it explicitly. The Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in 2024, the World Bank's policy recommendations, and numerous IFPRI briefs all pointed to the same structural issue: the world's food system runs on a fertilizer supply chain with no redundancy.

Brazil's response to the 2022 crisis was to announce plans, maintain existing trade relationships, and rely on strong commodity prices to absorb the cost shock. This was sufficient for a temporary disruption. Whether it is sufficient for a sustained one remains untested. The data from the intervening years suggests that the answer, based on what was actually built rather than what was announced, is no.