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The rain in Windsor, North Carolina<\/a>, is way behind schedule. Despite the seat of Bertie County being crisscrossed with rivers and creeks and lying on the estuary of the Albemarle Sound, local farmer Charles Harden reckons the area is suffering from a 12-inch rain shortfall in the first five months of 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been terrible dry,\u201d Harden told Salon. Windsor usually<\/a> gets about 50 inches of rain a year. That\u2019s bad news for his company, Clovergrass Produce, and its crop of soybeans, cucumbers, peanuts and corn plus his herd of beef cattle. \u201cWe\u2019re starting off this year in a drought,\u201d Harden said. \u201cWe ended last year in a drought.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRight now is harder than any time in the history of our country for agriculture,\u201d Harden said. He should have some idea of hard times \u2014 Harden is a ninth-generation North Carolinian farmer, his family having been in Bertie County since 1771.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been through a Revolutionary War, a Civil War, two world wars, and two depressions,\u201d Harden said. \u201cSo we\u2019ve seen it all.\u201d<\/p>\n Things were already difficult for independent producers like the Harden family, who had to weather the whims of corporate farming operations and distributors. The previous year had seen farmers across the nation struggle to keep their heads above water in the wake of President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff<\/a> policies and subsequent agricultural trade war<\/a> with China. A subsequent $12 billion relief package<\/a> from the Trump administration helped avert total disaster.<\/p>\n Then, Trump joined Israel in war against Iran<\/a>, causing trade through the Strait of Hormuz to come to a screeching halt. Prices<\/a> of everything from plastics and helium to fertilizer products have skyrocketed. About half<\/a> of the world\u2019s agricultural nitrogen-based urea fertilizer supply passes through the strait, along with 30% of global ammonia exports.<\/p>\n The price of chemicals necessary to produce fertilizer \u2014 phosphorus, nitrogen and ammonia, among others \u2014 has risen sharply since the start of the war, putting even more pressure on the nation\u2019s small and independent farmers and producers. When the Iran war began, fertilizer prices jumped from around $400 per ton in early February to nearly $600 per ton in early March. It\u2019s only risen since then.<\/p>\n This would be a problem in any other year, but this year is especially bad.\u00a0Coming off of 2025, market volatility saw farmers across the country hesitant to buy their year\u2019s fertilizer early, opting instead to buy it closer to the start of the spring growing season. What had been an expensive fertilizer became unaffordable for many, even after accounting for the Trump administration\u2019s bailout to farmers.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now is harder than any time in the history of our country for agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEverybody gets it and immediately pays creditors, whether it be on the input side or the banks,\u201d Harden explained. \u201cThat\u2019s what everybody\u2019s doing, because they have to \u2026 We\u2019re all trying to figure out these ways to pay people back when we\u2019re not making money.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can give us all the money you want,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to direct back into an independent market to create domestic revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n An April report<\/a> from the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 70% of the nation\u2019s farmers cannot afford the fertilizer needed to operate another year. The problem is especially acute in the Southeastern U.S., where just 19% of farmers and producers pre-booked their fertilizer shipments prior to the Iran war. As such, a whopping 78% report being unable to afford all the fertilizer they need.<\/p>\n Mitt Walker, director of national affairs at the Alabama Farmers Federation, says the region\u2019s farmers are under \u201csignificant strain.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMany producers are being forced to make difficult decisions about input use, crop selection, and long\u2011term investment, which may ultimately affect yields, profitability and farm viability,\u201d he said in a statement to Salon.<\/p>\n Mike McCormick, president of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, is grateful for what help the Trump administration can provide, but stressed that farmers in Mississippi \u201cneed relief.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, farmers simply want to raise a crop and sell it and earn enough to support their family and cover their bottom line,\u201d McCormick said in a statement to Salon, calling the situation for farmers \u201cvery difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Start your day with essential news from Salon. Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizer at financial services company Stone X, said farmers are \u201cstuck in a real bad situation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at the fertilizer situation, we\u2019ve never seen anything nearly as bad as what we are today,\u201d Linville told Salon, noting that the war in Iran has made the fertilizer situation even worse. China, which supplies 10% of the world\u2019s fertilizer exports, clamped down on its exports in February and tightened<\/a> them further in April, contributing to the rising costs. Linville thinks<\/a> China might not reverse the ban until August 2026, well after the bulk of the planting season.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Linville proposes short-term federal payments to farmers to help them survive the year, though he is \u201cnot a big fan\u201d of the practice.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, this entire situation is not the farmer\u2019s fault,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, because this is a government-driven situation, and the American farmer is being impacted more than most other industries out there, it justifies a payment.\u201d<\/p>\n For its part, the Trump administration is looking for ways to lower fertilizer costs. When asked for comment, the Department of Agriculture pointed Salon to a recent op-ed<\/a> from Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump administration has already taken bold actions to make fertilizer more affordable and accessible for our farmers in the short-term,\u201d Rollins wrote, noting Trump\u2019s 150-day suspension of the Jones Act<\/a>, which would allow fertilizer to move through the U.S. with more flexibility.<\/p>\n Along with this, Rollins celebrated Trump for \u201curging\u201d fertilizer companies to prioritize American buyers and allow farmers to lock in fertilizer prices through 2028.<\/p>\n \u201cThe market\u2019s not working the way it should. \u2026 These major producers have really worked to restrict and limit access to any competitors to get into the market.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAt the same time, we are also working to rebuild domestic production capacity in the long-term,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSeveral ongoing projects are expected to reach major construction benchmarks in the coming year, and early estimates suggest these facilities will supercharge our domestic production capacity as they begin operation,\u201d though clarified that the benefits would not appear \u201covernight.\u201d<\/p>\n Linville called it a \u201cmulti-year process,\u201d even if regulations are removed to speed up the buildup of a domestic stockpile. Indeed, one industry report<\/a> states that a single fertilizer-producing facility takes three to four years to build and fill to capacity, noting that a new ammonia plant in Louisiana began construction in 2025, with full operation expected in 2029.<\/p>\n Moreover, he thinks Rollins\u2019 goal<\/a> of increasing nitrogen production by 30% would not go to farmers but to existing \u201cindustrial demands\u201d and other energy initiatives, such as fuel for shipping vessels. Linville has a different idea: increase competition in fertilizer providers.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we can provide some sort of financing package for a new company to build a new nitrogen production facility, not only do you increase supply, you also increase competition,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a win-win for the farmer.\u201d<\/p>\n As it stands, the fertilizer market is small, with North American companies like Nutrien, Mosaic, and CF Industries accounting for more than $50 billion<\/a> in global market cap space. The U.S. itself produces 53 million tons of fertilizer<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe market\u2019s not working the way it should. \u2026 These major producers have really worked to restrict and limit access to any competitors to get into the market,\u201d Sarah Carden, the research and policy director at Farm Action, told Salon.<\/p>\n The federal government has had concerns about the lack of market competition<\/a> for years. Recently, the Department of Justice announced<\/a> it was investigating whether fertilizer companies in the U.S. have engaged in years of price-fixing. A separate lawsuit<\/a> in Colorado accuses some of the biggest domestic producers of the same charge.<\/p>\n Back in Windsor, North Carolina, Harden says there is virtually no competition. \u201cThey just can\u2019t compete, and it\u2019s really affecting us,\u201d he said of local fertilizer producers, often subject to buyouts. \u201cWe had a company that had been here since 1939 that specialized in fertilizer, and they\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n The USDA has also suggested<\/a> that farmers switch to less nitrogen-intensive crops, like soybeans, and to cut back on their fertilizer usage. Carden, who runs an organic vegetable farm, said that kind of switch isn\u2019t so easy. \u201cA lot of operations aren\u2019t that nimble,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you reduce your application rates, you\u2019re going to look at yield losses. So, it\u2019s a really challenging calculus on that front.\u201d<\/p>\n Carden, like just about every farmer in the nation, is dealing with yet another financial burden from the Iran war in the form of skyrocketing diesel fuel prices.<\/p>\n \u201cOur freight expenses are really bad right now. So, all of our shipping costs, and then diesel, have hit us really hard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Diesel costs have risen by 54.4% nationwide since the start of the Iran war, according to a real-time fuel cost tracker<\/a> from Brown University, which calculated the average cost of a gallon of diesel on May 14 at $5.67. Across many counties of the fertilizer-strapped southeast, diesel fuel costs have risen by more than 50%<\/a>. In response, Trump has called for ending the federal gas tax<\/a> to lower costs for Americans, though at the cost of cutting federal highway funds by billions of dollars.<\/p>\n Like Linville, Carden does not see many short-term fixes. Carden doesn\u2019t want taxpayers on the hook for billions more in relief payments, so she proposes using the Defense Production Act as a solution.<\/p>\n
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