Fertilizer costs have increased during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, putting pressure on American farmers who have been politically loyal to Donald Trump, as Democrats draw a direct connection between the president’s actions and suffering farms.
In his successful 2024 White House bid, 77.7 percent of the country’s farm-dependent counties went to Trump, according to one analysis based on U.S. Department of Agriculture data and elections results.
Already hit hard by Trump’s tariff and trade war with the rest of the world, farmers now are facing increased costs of the materials that make their crops grow. And the midterm elections that will determine control of the House and Senate are just six months away.
Faith Parum, an American Farm Bureau Federation economist, in a summary of a survey of more than 5,700 American farmers conducted in April, wrote that rising input costs tied to the conflict in the Middle East “are adding strain to an already challenging farm economy.”
“Fertilizer affordability challenges are most acute in the South and Northeast but remain a concern for farmers across all regions,” Parum wrote. “Around 70 percent of respondents report being unable to afford all the fertilizer they need.”
Farm diesel prices have increased 46 percent since the end of February, raising costs for fieldwork, fertilizer transport and irrigation during both planting and growing seasons. And more than half of respondents reported “worsening finances, reflecting rising fertilizer and fuel costs during spring planting and underscoring the urgent need for immediate economic assistance to keep farms’ gates open,” Parum wrote.
The Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have taken steps to react, including a Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry hearing set for Tuesday. Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said the hearing would explore legislative solutions aimed at improving long-term stability and affordability for producers. He joined Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins at an April 28 event to highlight the administration’s efforts to lower fertilizer costs.
“Farmers across Arkansas have told me that the cost and availability of fertilizer have always been a concern, but as they head in to planting season this year, it’s even more worrying,” Boozman said at that event.
For her part, Rollins said the administration was “laser-focused” on the matter and had taken steps that include efforts to increase domestic phosphate production by over 200 percent. The administration also had led a push to up potash production by over 100 percent, she added.
The administration also has suspended the Jones Act by stripping restrictions on fertilizer imports from Venezuela and had revised diesel exhaust fluid rules, Rollins said. Other moves she mentioned: using a Commerce Department investment program, speeding permitting, expediting fertilizer production projects, and enhancing an Energy Department financing program.
“This president remains resolute and convicted to do everything we possibly can to ensure that we are doing what we can to make sure that this doesn’t happen again with our fertilizer prices,” Rollins said.
That came on the same day that Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., introduced a bill aimed at getting at the high fertilizer bills by scrapping tariffs and countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco.
The measure has three GOP co-sponsors from agriculture states: Iowa’s Charles E. Grassley and Joni Ernst, as well as Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith.
“Kansas farmers are getting hit by a fertilizer market that’s working against them,” Marshall said in a statement.
The House passed a sprawling farm bill last month that is awaiting Senate action, but it did not contain provisions aimed at reversing the price spikes.
Chagrined Democratic lawmakers and party officials contend the White House has done too little to ease the fertilizer fretting amid Trump’s war.
Democratic National Committee Deputy Executive Director Libby Schneider said in a Thursday statement that “America’s farmers were already struggling to get by under Donald Trump and Brooke Rollins and now Trump’s war with Iran has pushed farmers to a breaking point.”
“Trump tanked the agricultural economy with his reckless trade war, causing family farms to go bankrupt at record levels, and now his deadly and costly war with Iran has caused prices on everything from diesel to fertilizer to skyrocket,” Schneider added. “Farmers are scraping by to make ends meet under Trump — and Trump and Rollins have done nothing but turn their backs on them.”
Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat from farm-heavy Minnesota, said “the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has made energy prices go up globally, and it’s increased the cost of living,” adding: “Everything from what my farmers are paying for fertilizer, to the fuel that they’re putting in their tractors as they go out to the field, let alone what everyday Americans are doing gassing up.”
“The president says we can’t afford to help American families with daycare or funding of Medicaid or Medicare because we’re fighting wars,” she said during an April 30 House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing. “Well, I strongly disagree with the president on this analysis.”
Another Democrat from a farming-rich Midwest state, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, said during an April 30 Armed Services Committee hearing that “the number one question I get when I’m back home from people is, basically, very simply: ‘When will this war end?’”
“Our farmers are paying because of fertilizer costs. We know that the whole world economy is paying a great deal for this war,” Peters said.
Rollins defended the Trump administration’s actions during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing in April on her department’s fiscal 2027 budget blueprint. That included when pressed by GOP Sen. Jerry Moran of agriculture-heavy Kansas, who noted that “prices are dramatically different.”
Rollins replied that administration officials have assembled an “all-of-government approach on fertilizer,” adding: “Obviously, the short-term issues are acute and require significant effort as we work to bring prices down for [the] short-term.”
Terrence Duffy, chairman and chief executive officer of financial services company CME Group, told the House Financial Services Task Force on April 29 that “when you have the price of oil escalating, it’s going to have an impact on some of these other derivatives of the oil product itself, including fertilizer and plastics and other components.”
“So, it is concerning. I know that some of the farm communit[ies] that I’ve spoken to [are] switching to less intensive fertilizer products, such as nitrogen and things of that [kind] to grow their products. I don’t think they should be having to do that,” Duffy added. “I think that we need to make sure that oil becomes a component that they can continue to use the fertilizer to create all the different farm products that they have. But fertilizer is a big deal, and I don’t think people are taking that under consideration.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when asked about higher fertilizer and fuel costs during a White House press briefing Tuesday, said the matter was a bigger problem for Iran.
“It’s the fertilizer that they need for their food and crops that’s stranded in the Persian [Gulf], not our fertilizer, their fertilizer,” he told reporters, before appearing to refer to the president’s talk of freeing some stranded cargo ships. “So we want to be helpful and that’s why the president stepped forward, because we’re the only ones that can, frankly.”
Source: Roll Call.com
