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oai:figshare.com:article/34027992 2026-09-29T22:04:08Z category_575 portal_316 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Data Sheet 10_Cut fast, restore slowly: fertiliser and energy demand in European agriculture through the 2021–2024 input price cycle, with evidence from the 2008 episode.csv Aras Yolusever (25139331) Food Packaging, Preservation and Safety asymmetric price response economic accounts for agriculture error correction European Union fertiliser demand input price shock nitrogen partial adjustment Introduction<p>The EU fertiliser price index rose from 129 in 2021 to 244 in 2022 (2020 = 100) and fell back to 152 by 2024, the second such cycle in 15 years. This study investigates how much input use was reduced when prices spiked, how much was restored when they fell, and whether slow restoration reflects a ratchet effect or lagged symmetric adjustment to a price level that never returned to its base.</p>Methods<p>Three sources are combined: the regional economic accounts for agriculture at previous-year prices, yielding price and volume indices for five intermediate inputs in 210 NUTS 2 regions of 20 countries (3,060 observations, 2021–2024, with price variation in 300 country-input-year cells); national statistics on mineral nitrogen and phosphorus consumption; and spliced national fertiliser price indices for 1996–2025. Fixed-effects regressions compare inputs within the same region and season; sign-split and error-correction regressions on a 24-country panel for 2002–2024 test whether the within-cycle pattern generalises.</p>Results<p>The short-run price–volume elasticity is −0.33 (standard error 0.07), indistinguishable across inputs and far from unity. Nitrogen use fell by 13.3 log per cent in 2022, and only 21 per cent of it had been restored by 2024, despite prices having returned three quarters of the spike; regions that cut fertiliser more deeply recorded lower crop output, an association that the 2022 drought confounds. Within the cycle, the sign-split regressions detect a response to price increases and a weaker one to decreases, a borderline difference sensitive to the inferential method. Over 2002–2024, when 42 per cent of price changes were decreases, the difference is insignificant in every specification that contains the error-correction term, which is strongly present (adjustment speed 0.28 per year, 0.17 to 0.18 after bias correction, bootstrap p = 0.001) and survives relative prices, year effects and standard errors robust to cross-country dependence.</p>Discussion<p>Slow restoration is consistent with lagged symmetric adjustment to a still-elevated price level; the data provide no convincing evidence of a ratchet effect. The 2022 cut was nevertheless contemporaneous and twice as deep as in 2008–2009. An illustrative scenario places 2025 nitrogen use 8 to 12 per cent below 2021.</p> 2026-09-29T22:04:08Z Dataset Dataset 10.3389/fsufs.2026.1976070.s009 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_Sheet_10_Cut_fast_restore_slowly_fertiliser_and_energy_demand_in_European_agriculture_through_the_2021_2024_input_price_cycle_with_evidence_from_the_2008_episode_csv/34027992 CC BY 4.0