Straight urea and CAN fertilisers should not be available in co-ops’ yards, Thomas Duffy told the Energy and Farm Diversification Show last week.

The former Macra president said that there “is no excuse anymore” for using straight CAN or urea.

“That stuff should not be in any yard and, frankly, if any co-op is buying it in, to try and protect our industry, they should not have that in their yards.

“It should not be available to buy, whether that’s a regulatory thing or not,” he said.

In a roadmap set out by Government, one of the actions proposed to reach climate neutrality by 2050 is to prohibit the use of urea and replace it with protected urea by the end of this year.

It also aims to have 65% of straight CAN sales as protected urea/protected nitrogen by 2030.