China said on Friday it would release fertilisers from national commercial reserves ahead of spring planting, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz disrupts global supplies.
The move aims to ensure adequate supply during peak agricultural demand, the China Agricultural Means of Production Association said in a statement, instructing storage firms to sell reserves to support orderly trading and stabilise prices.
The release includes nitrogen, phosphate and compound fertilisers.
The early drawdown of reserves follows a series of warnings from state-linked industry bodies urging producers not to hoard supplies or raise prices as farmers across the country prepare for spring planting.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has shut down regional fertiliser plants and severely disrupted shipping routes, threatening supplies to key global importers like India as farmers in the Northern Hemisphere gear up for planting.
The global fertiliser market was already tight, with China restricting exports this year to secure domestic supply, analysts said.
China, the world's largest producer of urea - a nitrogen based fertiliser, tightly controls exports via quotas and has issued no permits for shipments this year.
A prolonged conflict in the Middle East could reduce global output, although China remains on track to produce a record 76.5 million tonnes of urea this year, the China Nitrogen Fertiliser Industry Association said.
(Reporting by Daphne Zhang, Ethan Wang and Lewis Jackson; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Sumana Nandy)
