During Commodity Classic last week, leadership of the IL Corn Growers Association met with a representative of The Mosaic Company. The group discussed fertilizer availability, pricing, and the impact on Illinois farmers.
“The world has changed so much in the last month – not much of it good. The impact of fertilizer pricing and availability is a substantial problem for Illinois agriculture and we’re doing what we can do to address it, but without a lot of success,” said Matt Rush, IL Corn Growers Association Vice President.
Your leadership asked The Mosaic Company to reconsider eliminating tariffs. Mosaic said that tariffs are not a financial burden to US farmers there are other factors that are causing the increased prices. The Mosaic Company asked that farmers use “real facts” when considering this issue, challenging the point that they have a fertilizer monopoly. The Mosaic Company shared that they only make money one out of every ten years. IL Corn farmers respectfully agreed to disagree and moved on.
“Whatever the facts, the problems we’re having with availability, pricing, securing fertilizer contracts, is requiring producers to change their fertilizer application behaviors on the farm which are unfortunately counter to our goal to reduce nutrient loss and clean up our water,” said Rush.
Other leaders admitted to applying fertilizer in the fall instead of in the spring, simply to hedge their bets against not having access to fertilizer in the spring at all. Some indicated that their neighbors even noticed the change.
One request from IL Corn was that The Mosaic Company offer Triple Super Phosphate in the fall. The product is already offered in the fall in Brazil, but not in the U.S. If available, this product has the potential to reduce nitrogen loss, simply because it can be applied in the fall and does not contain nitrogen.
“At the end of the hour, I was convinced that Mosaic wasn’t really listening and brushed off all our concerns. We are trying to make an impact, but we aren’t getting anywhere fast. There is no silver bullet solution,” said Rush.
