Speaking at a recent Lucerne Australia information night at Keith, SA, he said global fertiliser prices had fallen by as much as 70 per cent from their peaks earlier last year.

It is welcome relief for croppers who watched helplessly as DAP prices more than tripled in only 20 months to mid-2008 because of soaring raw material and energy prices, and tight supplies.

"In $US phosphate rock went from $40 to $60 a tonne in 2006 to over $430/t in mid-2008, which flowed-on to the cost of DAP," Mr Tomlinson said.

"Now phosphate rock is closer to $US200/t, which will be a huge advantage in the next few years."

He said the impact of the global financial crisis had led to softening government intervention from major fertiliser exporting and importing countries like China and India, lower raw material and energy prices, declining international agricultural commodity prices, a strengthening $US, and enhanced supply capacity that had contributed to the price fall.

"After multiple years of strong economic growth and declining world grain stocks relative to use, we saw a huge increase in the consumption of fertiliser- after it had been quite stagnant for many years, which caught the industry napping," he said.

"The $US was weak and we saw international DAP wholesale prices up 390 per cent since January, 2007, then the global financial crisis hit and we saw raw materials fall, oil fall and freight fall."

The lower $A dollar was really helping farmers for the sale price of their outputs but would adversely effect the cost of fertiliser inputs as well as fuel and chemicals, because they were mostly imported.

* Extract from a full report in Stock Journal, March 19 issue.