Data Sheet 6_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

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.