On the heels of Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton appears to be headed for Tampa–an epicenter for phosphate production. Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizer at StoneX, joined AgriTalk to share the implications this could have on the market.
“We have to worry about all the people down there–this could be the first major hurricane to directly hit in modern Tampa history. But then you start to think about all the production, all the storage, everything that’s in that area for the phosphate market. It’s three or four weeks before fall application begins. This isn’t good,” he says.
Linville says the price of phosphate has been high in comparison to grain prices, and inventories of the product are already tight.
“I’m never going to sit there and say, ‘Oh, you’re not going to be able to find it. It won’t exist.’,” he says. “You’ll find it, but you might not like the price and you might not like the timeline.”
For those who have already locked in their orders for phosphate, Linville doesn’t believe there should necessarily be concern for those contracts changing.
“This might be something folks are talking about, and something that might be feared a little bit, but you hope that doesn’t make its way down to the farm gate,” he says. “You hope the market finds a way, and it always does.”
Additional Industry Trends
As for the rest of the fertilizer marketplace, Linville says urea prices are up, but maybe not for the reason you think.
“We suddenly saw urea prices starting to spike around the world, and everybody said the Iran attack is what caused price to go higher,” he says. “Supplies are tight on urea and everything else has been following it. Iran attacking Israel was not the thing that caused it. It was just the trigger that allowed the market to come together and say we now need to move higher.”
The potash market, on the other hand, is well valued and well supplied.
“Our only real concern when it comes to potash is maybe we see some price increases in the middle of season, because folks who wait until the absolute last minute may say they need something right now, and that costs a little bit more,” Linville says.
Linville adds that spring is hard to predict this far out, but supply issues tend to be long lasting. He recommends having a conversation now with retailers and suppliers.
