EU agricultural prices continued to rise in Q3 2022

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has significantly disturbed global agricultural markets in 2022. Russia and Ukraine had been major exporters of grains, wheat, maize, oilseeds (particularly sunflowers) and fertilisers until the war started. Furthermore, the actions to phase out the EU’s dependency on Russian fossil fuels have driven up energy prices. This has all underpinned sharp price rises for key agricultural products and inputs, as new Eurostat data shows.

Between the third quarter of 2021 (Q3 2021) and the third quarter of 2022 (Q3 2022), the average EU price of agricultural products as a whole (output) rose sharply (+30%) for the same ‘basket’ of products. This represented a further acceleration in price rises (+25% between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022). There were particularly strong price increases noted for cereals (+52%), eggs (+49%) and milk (+42%).

Over the same period, the average price of goods and services currently consumed in agriculture (i.e. inputs not related to investment) for the EU as a whole increased by 35% for the same ‘basket’ of inputs, which was a similar rate of increase as between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022 (+36%). Within this basket, there were some considerable price hikes; the average EU price of fertilisers and soil improvers doubled (+101%), with sharp rises also for energy and lubricants (+60%) and for animal feeding stuffs (+35%).

This information comes from data on agricultural price indices published by Eurostat today. 
 

Source datasets: apri_pi15_outq and apri_pi15_inq 

In every Member State, the average price of both inputs not related to investment and agricultural output increased between Q3 2021 and Q3 2022.

The sharpest rates of increase in the average price of agricultural output over this period were observed in Hungary (+61%), Lithuania (+54%) and Slovakia (+46%). The smallest rates of increase were noted for Cyprus, Malta (both +5%) and Greece (+9%).
 

Source datasets: apri_pi15_outq and apri_pi15_inq

The sharpest rates of increase in the average price of inputs not related to investment were recorded in Lithuania (+73%), Latvia (+68%) and Hungary (+60%). The smallest rates of increase were observed in Malta (+13%), Denmark (+24%) and Italy (+25%).