Fertilizer Prices Finally Cooling Down

For the first time since November 2020, most retail fertilizer prices have moved lower. After soaring to record levels, product values are finally cooling down.

The biggest drop has been in urea down nearly 50-percent since late March, with New Orleans prices dropping from a high of $935 per ton last year to $470 earlier this week.  One fertilizer expert tells me it’s tied to one of the latest planting seasons in several years.

 Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizer at StoneX, says, “Corn acres have dropped from that 91, 93 to that sub-90 that’s a lot of demand loss.  We’ve had a lot more imports than what we expected.  This late spring means all this product got into place in time and is now actually getting jammed up because its not moving like it should.”   

With prices trending lower farmers are asking if this is the time to lock in some prices?  But Linville says farmers need to keep things in perspective.

Linville, “You’re trying to get me to buy something 10 or 11 months out from application, I don’t love it.  And as cheap as we look today it looks cheap because of what we’ve gone through the last 12 months.  If you go back throughout the history of urea these are very very high numbers still.”  

So will prices continue to slide?  Linville says it depends on whether or not China restarts their exports, and the outcome of the war in Ukraine will also impact Russian fertilizer product exports.  Plus, the amount of corn acres for 2023 will get factored in.