Ahead of a planned busy spring season for farmers, Ravensdown has cut the price of urea by $20 per tonne on top of June’s $40 per tonne reduction.

​With New Zealand rural production performing well, the efficient use of nitrogen to optimise plant growth will be important according to Greg Campbell, Chief Executive at the farmer-owned co-operative.

“With Ravensdown’s growing confidence and continued focus on quality and availability of product, it is important for a co-operative like ours to try and pass on global input price changes to farmers, particularly as they face a current headwind of declining dairy auction prices,” said Greg.

The change for urea to $585 per tonne is effective on orders from midnight 23rd July.

Whilst urea’s price decline is good news for farm profitability, Ravensdown’s nutrient advisors will be working with farmers to ensure that nitrogen application complies with limits for modelled potential losses.

“As a farmer-owned co-operative, we help farmers put on only what they need,” said Greg. “We achieve this using accurate soil test data, sound advice from certified advisors and interactive maps of fertiliser placement.”

“Our Smart Maps initiative makes this process easy for our customers to understand and monitor nutrient availability and depletion, optimising production whilst reducing environmental impact.”

Nitrogen is often the prime nutrient needed by many plants. Nitrogen is required for the synthesis of proteins, enzymes and cell membranes in plants and for making chlorophyll.