As inflation wholesale prices soar past 10 percent and gas prices continue to surge, economists and farmers across the country are warning about another looming crisis.
Farmers are seeing a fertilizer shortage. Combined with high water and fuel prices, costs are set to soar as food becomes less available.
Convo with farm today:
— Douglas Karr (@douglaskarr) March 11, 2022
- Meat processors booked out a year because stockpiling beef.
- Farmers in South can’t get fertilizer for crops now.
- Farmers in Midwest are switching, can’t get nitrogen nor fertilizer.
Buckle up, folks! The media isn’t even warning you. #economy
This is from a friend who is a farmer. He told me the cost of water is becoming astronomical as well. It’s almost $800 per acre ft. pic.twitter.com/CGEy4OGnz0
— Tamika Hamilton (@TamikaGHamilton) March 14, 2022
From Market Watch:
Fertilizer prices were already running red hot this year before a European energy crisis fanned the flames, potentially adding to a pinch on farmers in the U.S. and around the world and stoking worries about food inflation.
“It’s almost like a perfect storm of different reasons that probably has a lot of upside in price for different macronutrients,” said Samuel Taylor, Cleveland-based executive director of research at Rabobank, in a phone interview.
Natural gas is a key ingredient in the process used to make nitrogen-based fertilizers used on a range of crops, including corn and wheat. Natural gas accounts for 75% to 90% of operating costs in the production of nitrogen, Taylor noted.
Do the geniuses in this “kill-fossil-fuels” administration realize that natural gas is a key ingredient for fertilizer? Natural gas accounts for 75% to 90% of operating costs in the production of nitrogen. Their war on energy is freezing AND starving us. https://t.co/4Dtsf99h8G
— David Asman (@DavidAsmanfox) March 10, 2022
Some are warning the Russian invasion into Ukraine, resulting in new sanctions on the Kremlin, will make it much worse. Fertilizer companies in Russia are sounding the alarm. From Reuters:
A global food crisis looms unless the war in Ukraine is stopped because fertiliser prices are soaring so fast that many farmers can no longer afford soil nutrients, Russian fertiliser and coal billionaire Andrei Melnichenko said on Monday.
"The events in Ukraine are truly tragic. We urgently need peace," Melnichenko, 50, who is Russian but was born in Belarus and has a Ukrainian mother, told Reuters in a statement emailed by his spokesman.
"One of the victims of this crisis will be agriculture and food," he said.
CORRECTION: Russian fertilizer and coal billionaire Andrei Melnichenko said a global food crisis looms unless the war in Ukraine is stopped. We are deleting a previous video that contained an incorrect company name https://t.co/DunDNnQYVL pic.twitter.com/cIf5LHrhTO
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 14, 2022
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