Dwight Pierce Powell

The Worst Possible Moment About 50% of the nitrogen applied to U.S. corn goes in during spring planting. A vessel loaded in the Persian Gulf today takes 30 days to reach a U.S. port And another 3 to 4 weeks to reach interior farm markets. The American Farm Bureau Federation sent an urgent letter to the White House on March 9th. And their message was direct: fertilizer is stranded in the Middle East during the most critical window of the agricultural calendar. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins confirmed publicly that roughly 25% of American farmers have not yet secured their fertilizer for this spring. The choice facing those farmers is ugly. They can reduce nitrogen application, switch from corn (which needs heavy nitrogen) to soybeans. Or, absorb the cost and bet on crop prices recovering. None of those options are good. One Iowa corn grower put the math in plain terms. Anhydrous ammonia cost him $492 a ton in 2021. By January 2025, it was $745. Corn prices barely moved. Now add the current shock on top of that. At current levels, it takes roughly 133 bushels of corn to buy one ton of urea, the highest ratio since the 2022 spike.