The Energy Crisis Is Making European Farmers Choose Between Planting and Going Bankrupt

European farmers face impossible choices this spring as fertiliser costs explode and diesel prices soar. Here is what the decisions being made right now mean for food prices in autumn.

The agricultural planning season is, for European farmers, the annual moment when the entire year's economic fate is determined by input purchasing decisions made in a window that cannot be extended. Seed, fertiliser, fuel, and labour must be committed in spring for a harvest that arrives in autumn. The prices at which those inputs are purchased determine whether the harvest revenue covers costs or produces a loss.

In spring 2026, European farmers are making planting season decisions in the most difficult input cost environment since the 2022 Russian invasion disrupted fertiliser and energy markets. The Iran war's gas price spike has hit nitrogen fertiliser prices — which track natural gas prices because natural gas is the primary feedstock for nitrogen fertiliser synthesis — with specific force: nitrogen fertiliser is up approximately 40 percent from pre-war levels.

For a French wheat farmer with 200 hectares, the increased fertiliser cost represents approximately €40,000 in additional spending relative to 2024's input costs. This sum is not covered by the current wheat futures price at the volumes his farm produces. He has three choices: apply full recommended fertiliser rates and lose money, reduce application rates and accept lower yields (which may generate more loss per hectare depending on wheat prices), or leave land fallow and forgo revenue entirely.

Multiplied across the thousands of European grain farmers facing this calculation, the aggregate consequence is a European wheat harvest that will be 8-15 percent below trend in 2026 according to agricultural economists' projections. This is before accounting for the weather effects — the extraordinary March heat, the dry winter, the prospect of a challenging growing season — that compound the input cost problem.

For European food prices in autumn 2026: wheat is a fundamental input for bread, pasta, biscuits, and dozens of other food categories. An 8-15 percent wheat production shortfall in Europe, occurring against a backdrop of disrupted Middle Eastern wheat production (Iran and Egypt are significant wheat producers and consumers), will push food prices higher through the autumn and winter in ways that arrive after the energy price crisis has already eroded household purchasing power.