(Bloomberg) -- European fertilizer giant Yara International ASA said the energy crisis is forcing it to curb output and warned that more cuts may come.

The huge ammonia distributor is among producers around the world that have cut output due to high prices of natural gas, a crucial feedstock used to make crop nutrients. Yara said Tuesday that it has curtailed several sites, cutting capacity by 1.3 million tons for ammonia and 1.7 million tons for finished fertilizer.

The Norwegian company’s chief executive officer said it’s on constant watch in case it needs to further lower production.

“It’s not only likelihood, it’s happening as we’re speaking,” Svein Tore Holsether said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “We’ve had to curtail several of our plants in Europe now with a significant increase that we saw in gas prices, starting in mid-June and continuing into July.”

The cuts highlight the impact that Europe’s gas crunch is having on industrial users as well as consumers’ energy bills. Higher prices or shortages of fertilizers are also prompting farmers to use less, threatening to raise crop prices or hurt harvests at a time when food costs are near a record high.

The surge in gas prices meant Yara paid more than four times as much for the fuel during the second quarter as it did a year earlier. Right now, it’s paying five times as much as a year ago.

“This is an everyday, every hour evaluation that we do in our company on how best to optimize and also utilize the global footprint that we have in order to make sure that we can have as efficient and as cost-effective operations as possible,” Holsether said.

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