From Reason, April 11:
In time, demand for poop and ash may offset the fertilizer crunch.
If you're a compulsive doom-scroller (and who isn't, these days?) you probably have your eyes on rising food prices with the threat of further hikes to come. Supply-chain disruptions, pandemic lockdowns, and economic sanctions had the price of fertilizer soaring even before Russia invaded Ukraine, threatening grain exports as well as the availability of fertilizer for crops. It's an international headache that bodes poorly for budgets in wealthy countries and threatens hunger in poor ones. But price pressures may spur the development of soil-enriching products old and new that could, eventually, help offset expense while diversifying the marketplace in the future.
"From South America's avocado, corn and coffee farms to Southeast Asia's plantations of coconuts and oil palms, high fertilizer prices are weighing on farmers across the developing world, making it much costlier to cultivate and forcing many to cut back on production," The Wall Street Journal warned in January even before the horror show in Ukraine. "That means grocery bills could go up even more in 2022, following a year in which global food prices rose to decade highs."
Since then, troops from Russia, a major exporter of wheat, crossed into Ukraine, another important grower of grain, tightening the availability of food around the world in general, and especially in countries in Africa and the Middle East that traditionally rely on those sources. Prices rose 12.6 percent just in March, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization Food Price Index. Worse, Russia and Belarus are important exporters of fertilizer and of precursor chemicals for making the stuff, driving costs even higher for farmers around the world.
"In addition to being one of the largest producers of wheat, Russia has enormous resources in terms of nutrients," warns Svein Tore Holsether, president and CEO of fertilizer giant Yara International. "Plants need nitrogen, phosphate, and potash to grow.…In total, 25% of European supply of these three nutrients come from Russia" and Belarus supplies 20 percent of the world's potash.
But farmers grew crops long before the world relied on commercial fertilizers and international suppliers of precursor chemicals....
....MUCH MORE
Please poop faster, we're thinking of shorting a name mentioned in passing re: the Canadian Pacific labor brewhaha brouhaha (sorry, thinking beer) on March 21:
More Details On the Lockout At Canadian Pacific Railways
It's a pretty big deal. Since we posted "Agriculture: And Now, A Potential Strike At Canadian Pacific" six days ago, Intrepid Potash jumped from $57 to $77 (after reporting higher revs, earnings miss, on March 7th):
The bigger Potash producers, Nutrien and Mosaic, are up as well though not as dramatically....
IPI $105.09 down $1.82 after bouncing around $108 premarket.
