Consumption of nitrogen fertiliser in agriculture
- Eurostat dataset
- aei_fm_usefert
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- tonnes of nutrient
Key estimates
- Highest value: Türkiye at 1 916 971 tonnes of nutrient; lowest: Malta at 190.3 tonnes of nutrient.
- Cross-country mean 329 977 tonnes of nutrient, standard deviation 477 998, coefficient of variation 144.9% across 30 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: -4.8% on a constant panel of 30 countries.
How much nitrogen does European agriculture apply? Eurostat dataset aei_fm_usefert reports consumption of nitrogen fertiliser in agriculture for 30 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. Fertiliser consumption is the main controllable driver of agricultural nitrogen pressure.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Türkiye (1 916 971), France (1 824 613), Germany (1 073 690), Spain (871 886), Italy (568 092), all expressed in tonnes of nutrient. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Malta (190.3), Luxembourg (10 446), Iceland (10 670), Slovenia (25 595), Albania (30 678). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 10073.42, while the median country reports 141 979 tonnes of nutrient against a mean of 329 977 tonnes of nutrient.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 477 998 tonnes of nutrient, giving a coefficient of variation of 144.9%. The mean sits above the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the upper tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 30 countries reporting in both periods moved by -4.8%. The largest relative increases are observed in Albania (+77.4%), Romania (+28.1%), Bulgaria (+23.4%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Malta (-66.7%), Germany (-34.6%), Luxembourg (-21.8%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Lower values are the policy-preferred direction, so the top of the distribution identifies where the burden concentrates: bringing the highest observation down to the median would remove 1 774 992 tonnes of nutrient from the European total for that country alone. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset aei_fm_usefert ('Consumption of inorganic fertilizers'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-06-03. Filter dimensions: nutrient=N; unit=T. Unit of measure: tonnes of nutrient. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (30 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.