Workers plant produce at Bluff View Farms in West Jefferson, N.C., on April 24, 2026. Allison Joyce/Getty Images
Farmers in the United States have seen fertilizer inputs and diesel costs balloon by up to 40 percent over the past five years because of China’s export restrictions, the Russia–Ukraine war, U.S. tariffs, and, most recently, India’s massive state procurements that have drained a global market already diminished by Iran’s shutdown of Strait of Hormuz shipping.
But what most concerns many is the long-term fallout from the consolidation of the fertilizer industry, with just four multinational corporations accounting for 77 percent of domestic nitrogen sales, and all potash and phosphate production, while operating in the United States with little transparency and pocketing annual profits of more than 140 percent.