The Iran war is spiking fertilizer costs, just as Maryland farmers look to plant

Because so much global shipping traffic passes through the Strait of Hormuz, prices on all sorts of commodities are spiking as the war in the Middle East escalates.

That includes fertilizer.

Prices for urea, a nitrogen fertilizer, are up more than 25% per ton since the end of February, according to Farm Journal.

Ben Hushon, a certified crop adviser at The Mill, which has stores across Maryland, said 30%-40% of all urea used on the East Coast is imported through the blocked Strait of Hormuz. It’s unclear when ships can resume routine passage through the strait.

The price spikes and uncertainty are hitting Maryland farmers just as spring planting season begins.

Harrison Palmer, chief of staff at the Maryland Department of Agriculture, said the state is keeping a close eye on the situation.

Maryland had more than 1,978,000 acres of farmland in 2022, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Agriculture is Maryland’s largest commercial industry, according to the state, with most farmland in Frederick and Carroll counties and on the upper Eastern Shore.

There’s farm activity across the state, though: Montgomery County has more than 550 working farms and more than 93,000 acres of preserved farmland. Howard County has more than 345 farms and 37,000 acres of farmland, and Anne Arundel County has more than 400 farms on 36,000 acres.

Fertilizer prices are volatile, Palmer said, and spikes have happened before, such as at the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.

Agriculture industry experts said Maryland farmers have two potential strategies to deal with the rising fertilizer costs. One is simple: Use less fertilizer, which means that yields could be lower, shrinking already tight profit margins.

Farmers could also change what they’re planting — though it may be too late for changes on some of the largest farms. Soybeans require less nitrogen fertilizer than other crops, like corn.

But changing plans can be expensive and logistically complicated. It could also imperil soil quality if growers are unable to rotate what crops they’re growing in different years.

On the farm

Leslie Bauer owns Rural Rhythm Farm in Howard County and is president of the county’s farm bureau.

In addition to corn and soybeans, her farm grows rye for Sagamore Spirit Distillery. By contract, it has to produce a certain amount of rye, Bauer said, so they can’t pivot to producing more soybeans or using less fertilizer.

“We will follow our current fertilizer program, and it will just be additional expense,” she said.

Bauer said she had not, as of late last week, heard from any Maryland farmers with specific plans to change their crops for the year, or who were reconsidering how much to plant.

But, she said, the higher costs will mean farmers across the state continue to struggle with declining revenue.

“Those costs are going up, but the farmer, what he’s getting paid for what he’s growing, is not,” she said.

One urea alternative that Maryland has in abundance is chicken manure. Chicken farms on the Eastern Shore produce manure that can be added to farms, and Palmer said the Department of Agriculture has programs to help farmers pay to transport it to their fields.

“But the neighbors don’t like that so much,” Bauer said. “There is an odor that goes with that.”

By the numbers

Hushon said the price of urea-based liquid nitrogen fertilizer has risen from about $350 a ton to roughly $450 a ton since the start of the war, while granular urea prices have gone from around $500 per ton to over $700 per ton.

And he said he doesn’t anticipate the prices stopping at those points, so long as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted.

Hushon said he, like Bauer, hadn’t heard from any farmers taking steps to change their growing plans for the year, “but there’s talk of it.”

Representatives of the Maryland Farm Bureau declined to comment and pointed to statements from the American Farm Bureau Federation. The federation’s president sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week, urging him to protect ships trying to navigate the Strait of Hormuz and suspend import duties on fertilizer.

“We are deeply concerned that failure to act could lead to disruptions to the food supply chain not seen since 2022 when food price inflation reached 40-year highs,” wrote the federation’s president, Zippy Duvall.

The U.S. produces fertilizer domestically, but it does not make any nitrogen fertilizers on the East Coast, Hushon said. The U.S. imports from countries, such as Canada, that don’t use the Strait of Hormuz, but global pressure on fertilizer could still create a strain on the available supply and increase prices.

The one bright spot for Maryland farmers, Hushon said, is that they’re already used to carefully monitoring their nitrogen use, because of environmental measures meant to protect the Chesapeake Bay.

Farmers here put “a little” nitrogen on now, and then come back later in the season to add more. He called it a “spoon-feeding” approach.

“There is time,” he said. “It’s serious, but farmers don’t need to put it all on in the next 30 days.”