Urea up 80% since February. WFO Board Member Gunsham Seeborun on how Mauritius’ total fertiliser import dependence is hitting smallholders hardest — and why seaweed could be the island’s answer.

Mauritius imports virtually all its fertiliser — there is no domestic production — so the Hormuz-driven surge has hit fast and hard. Urea is now above $850/mt, up roughly 80% since February. Sugarcane growers, the backbone of local agriculture, have cut nitrogen application rates and delayed top-dressing, prioritising the plots with the best expected returns.

Food-crop smallholders, who lack cooperative buying power and cash reserves, have cut fertiliser use more sharply than larger operators, risking yield losses on already small plots. Larger commercial producers and estates have generally been able to lock in supply contracts and absorb costs better, widening the gap with smallholders.

Building resilience to recurring shocks

Seeborun points to a set of measures to strengthen resilience, differentiated by scale:

• Strengthening farmer cooperatives and bulk-purchasing schemes, so smallholders gain the negotiating power and storage capacity currently available mainly to larger estates.
• Considering a strategic fertiliser reserve, given Mauritius’ total import dependence as a small island state.
• Diversifying sourcing away from reliance on a single region — and, looking further ahead, diversify away from imported mineral fertiliser altogether by investing in domestic alternatives drawn from the blue economy, such as seaweed-based inputs, so that future shocks to seaborne mineral fertiliser trade matter less.
• Target support to smallholders through input vouchers rather than blanket subsidies, while larger producers benefit more from price-risk tools like forward contracts and hedging.

A blue economy opportunity: seaweed as fertiliser

On sustainable solutions, Seeborun highlights an opportunity specific to Mauritius’ geography: scaling up locally produced biofertiliser and compost, already piloted through the island’s Community Development Fund, to reduce mineral fertiliser dependency across scales.

Looking further ahead, he flags a longer-term research opportunity: Mauritius has an estimated 435 species of seaweed in its waters, yet no seaweed industry has been established to date, despite growing evidence that seaweed extracts make effective, non-polluting biostimulants and fertiliser substitutes. Investment in blue economy R&D — cultivation, extraction, and agronomic trials — could give small island states like Mauritius a locally-sourced, climate-resilient input that reduces exposure to imported mineral fertiliser shocks entirely.

Alongside this, Seeborun points to promoting precision input use — soil testing, split applications under the island’s Smart Agriculture approach: smallholders need low-cost decision tools, while estates can invest in more mechanised precision applications. He also calls for incentivising practices that directly cut fertiliser needs, such as green-cane harvesting with trash retention, and crop rotation or intercropping for food-crop growers.

As he puts it, transition support should reflect scale: smallholders need extension services and cooperative-level infrastructure; estates can adopt technology-driven approaches independently.