As Iran pinches the Strait of Hormuz, American farmers are getting squeezed
| Plant City, Fla.
Lance Lillibridge is looking through his financial ledgers over the past few years, putting some perspective on the rising costs of fertilizer for most American farmers.
Mr. Lillibridge, an Iowa corn grower and part of a family of farmers going back a century, has roughly 1,250 acres devoted to his corn crop 鈥� including a few acres of hay to feed his some 60 head of beef cattle. Every year, he needs to add nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to his fields. 鈥淔ertilizer is our No. 1 expense, other than land,鈥� he says.
In 2021, his price for a ton of anhydrous ammonia, which he uses to shoot nitrogen into the soil, was $492. The price of corn at the same time was around $4.50 a bushel, according to his records. By January 2025, the price of corn he commands remained about the same. But anhydrous ammonia jumped to $745 a ton.
Why We Wrote This
American farmers are seeing fertilizer prices spike as supply is choked off by Iran鈥檚 threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, in response to attacks by the U.S. and Israel. It鈥檚 a sign of how the war is affecting the global economy 鈥� including spring planting.
Then the United States and Israel attacked Iran, which retaliated by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz 鈥� the narrow, 21-mile-wide waterway between Iran and Oman through which nearly one-fifth of the world鈥檚 oil flows. It is also the choke point for roughly one-third of the world鈥檚 traded fertilizer supply.
鈥淥n Feb. 13, the cost was $850 a ton, and the price of corn was just above $4,鈥� Mr. Lillibridge says of the weeks before the attacks on Iran began. 鈥淔ertilizer鈥檚 going up; corn鈥檚 going down. And today, [anhydrous ammonia] is $1,050 a ton,鈥� he says as he checks his supplier鈥檚 website. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what鈥檚 going on with Iran.鈥�
Indeed, the attacks on Iran are jolting global energy markets, continuing to push up the price of oil. But for America鈥檚 farmers, the more immediate crisis might be unfolding in the current spikes in the cost of fertilizers.
The timing could hardly be worse. Across the Corn Belt, spring planting begins in a matter of weeks. Nitrogen fertilizers, considered the most critical input for growing corn, must be in the ground before seeds go in every year, and are used later in the season as well, unlike phosphorus and potassium.
鈥淚鈥檝e had many, many phone calls this week from farmers in panic,鈥� says Mr. Lillibridge, a past president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. 鈥淭hey can鈥檛 even get a price on it.鈥�
Other crops, too, are feeling the effects of what has become a price spike on top of a price spike. In Georgia, some report they can no longer afford to plant a crop because of fertilizer prices. In Arkansas, report a looming economic crisis as fuel and fertilizer costs skyrocket and commodity prices fall.
In Florida, strawberry farmers have recently been celebrating the close of the winter season, during the first week of March, as they begin to prepare for the next. While fertilizer costs are a much smaller line item 鈥� labor costs being the highest, as strawberries are picked throughout the winter months 鈥� farmers here are also feeling pinched by rising costs, and by weather disturbances.
鈥淲e have never, ever seen this amount of wind during a freeze in Florida, ever,鈥� says Bob McDowell, a manager at Fancy Farms in Plant City, Florida, where he has been working for about 25 years. 鈥淎 lot of the old-timer farmers that I talked to, they said we鈥檝e never experienced those two conditions at the same time.鈥�
Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture declaration for the freeze, estimating agricultural losses at more than $3 billion. But the war with Iran has affected Florida agriculture in other ways as well, Mr. McDowell and other experts point out.
Indeed, there is a particular irony in what is happening just south of Tampa, in the flatlands of Polk County. Beneath those fields lies one of the world鈥檚 great deposits of phosphate rock, the source of another type of fertilizer.
But phosphate fertilizer requires a lot of sulfur to produce. The sulfur arrives by ship, processed into sulfuric acid, which reacts with the phosphate rock to unlock its nutrients. And roughly half of the world鈥檚 exported sulfur moves through the Strait of Hormuz.
Nitrogen fertilizers, which require natural gas to produce them, have similar supply chain issues, says Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizers at StoneX Group, a financial services firm that includes a specialization in commodities.
Methane 鈥� the primary component of natural gas 鈥� is heated with steam to extract hydrogen, which is then combined with nitrogen drawn from the atmosphere to produce ammonia.
From ammonia, manufacturers make a full range of nitrogen fertilizers: anhydrous ammonia, which farmers like Mr. Lillibridge inject directly into the soil; urea, the granular form that travels by ship across oceans; and liquid nitrogen solutions applied during the growing season.
鈥淣ow, three of the world鈥檚 10 largest urea exporters 鈥� Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Iran 鈥� are cut off behind the strait,鈥� says Mr. Linville, who grew up in a farming household in Missouri.
鈥淚srael鈥檚 and the United States鈥� war with Iran threatens to curtail natural gas flows to Egypt, another top 10 exporter,鈥� he continues. 鈥淎nd India, one of the world鈥檚 largest buyers of nitrogen fertilizer, is facing its own domestic production problems.鈥�
Fertilizer supply was already low
So what is unfolding now is not simply a crisis born of the current conflict with Iran, Mr. Linville says. Global fertilizer markets were already dangerously depleted.
China, historically one of the world鈥檚 largest exporters of nitrogen fertilizers, said earlier this year that it would not export until August. Europe, still reeling from the loss of Russian natural gas following what Sweden and Denmark have called the intentional destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, has been running nitrogen production at roughly three-quarters of normal capacity.
Taken together, those two disruptions had already removed millions of tons of nitrogen fertilizers from a market that could ill afford the loss.
鈥淗ad we gotten on the phone before the U.S. and Israel struck Iran,鈥� Mr. Linville says, 鈥淚 would have told you we still had supply problems, globally speaking.鈥�
Making matters worse, the American fertilizer market had effectively frozen in the months before the war began 鈥� not because of shortages per se, but because of farmers and retailers playing wait-and-see.
Mr. Lillibridge knows this well. As fertilizer prices climbed steadily over the past couple of years, corn prices did not. Unable to pencil out a profit, farmers refused to lock in purchases. Retailers, unwilling to risk being caught holding expensive inventory if prices fell, declined to build up their stocks.
Challenges beyond war鈥檚 effects
Corn growers like Mr. Lillibridge also insist current shortages are not simply because of the current crisis.
He says the primary problem has been the consolidation of agricultural suppliers 鈥� seed, fertilizer, and chemical companies 鈥� into a handful of dominant players with no meaningful competition.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been working very hard and trying to have transparency into why costs keep rising,鈥� says Mr. Lillibridge. 鈥淎nd there is no transparency. If we had enforced antitrust laws over the last 40 years, our house would be in order. Our house is not in order.鈥�
In December 2025, President Donald Trump issued an directing the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to establish task forces to investigate alleged price-fixing and anticompetitive behavior in the food supply chain, specifically naming fertilizer as a vulnerable sector.
鈥淐ompanies claim fertilizer is a world market and they don鈥檛 control the prices,鈥� Mr. Lillibridge says. 鈥淎nd I disagree with that. There鈥檚 no place that I can go and hedge that cost. Where can I do that? It鈥檚 not available.鈥�
For Mr. Linville, national security is the real issue, as conflicts continue in the Gulf region. But he sees it in a very different context.
鈥淭he biggest national security issue for every country around the world is food availability,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd we鈥檙e talking about being so dependent on nitrogen imports. We need to get to where we鈥檙e less reliant, so that we know we can at least feed our people year in and year out.
鈥淲e have the capability, and we have the finances,鈥� Mr. Linville continues, noting how much natural gas the U.S. has with which to make its own nitrogen fertilizers, if it had the facilities. 鈥淢y gosh, with what we spent on Iran in the last couple of weeks, we could have built a new facility.鈥�
