Texas A&M University economists will soon deliver a report to Congress that will show the surging fertilizer price impact on U.S. farmers is over double the drag estimated in a report late last year.
Lawmakers may use the information to decide whether to push a program that would temper some of the price implications.
The United Nations said Russia is the world’s No. 1 exporter of nitrogen fertilizer and No. 2 in phosphorus and potassium fertilizers. Its ally Belarus, also contending with Western sanctions, is another major fertilizer producer. Many developing countries — including Mongolia, Honduras, Cameroon, Senegal, Ghana, Mexico and Guatemala — rely on Russia for at least a fifth of their imports.
The Russia/Ukraine war also has driven up the already exorbitant price of natural gas, used to make nitrogen fertilizer. The result: European energy prices are so high that some fertilizer companies “have closed their businesses and stopped operating their plants,” said David Laborde, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute, according to the Associated Press.