According to the National Association of Wheat Growers, countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizer cost Washington wheat farmers about $14 million from 2021-25, but Andy Juris predicts nitrogen and sulfur are shaping up to be bigger headaches for the state’s wheat growers.
Juris, a farmer from Bickleton, Wash., and chair of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers’ (WAWG) Marketing Committee, has been tracking events in the Middle East, and how they might impact grower inputs. WAWG has used his research during advocacy visits to Washington, D.C., and he was set to testify in front of the federal Ways and Means Committee earlier this year, although that trip was cancelled. Juris said growers are headed towards a squeeze on base nitrogen and sulfur.
“Wheat uses phosphate, obviously, but it is not a high user of it. We’re seeing guys curb phosphate use. You probably do take some nominal yield hits as a result, but you’re balancing that economic threshold of it buying you two extra bushels of yield but costing five bushels to use it,” he explained. “Where I think we’re headed is a squeeze on base nitrogen and sulfur. Wheat loves sulfur; it’s probably one of the more important nutrients.”
Sulfuric acid is primarily produced when petroleum is refined or during natural gas processing and is essential for manufacturing ammonium sulfate, which provides nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and sulfur. Nitrogen is manufactured primarily through the Haber-Bosch process, which combines nitrogen from the air with hydrogen, usually sourced from natural gas.
Since Feb. 28, when the Iran war began, Juris said many of the oil fields in the Middle East have been damaged, reducing fuel extraction and thereby petroleum byproducts, such as natural gas, which fires the Haber-Bosch process.
“That’s why they have a whole bunch of fertilizer processing in that area,” Juris said. “A lot of those oil fields got damaged. Some of the fertilizer production, especially in the UAE and Qatar, they’re looking at five to seven years to bring those back online after the damage.”
Of course, the Strait of Hormuz blockade is also a huge factor in fertilizer shortages, but even if it were to open, companies can’t afford insurance on their ships making the transit.
“The U.S. probably controls the water in a broad sense, but you don’t need to control the water to shut it down. The big legitimate shippers, like Maersk, have to operate within the bounds of international law, and they have to insure their ships. They’re not going to risk a ship worth hundreds of millions of dollars in cargo hitting a mine or getting a drone flown into it,” Juris explained.
Wheat growers are price takers, meaning they can’t set the market price for their grain and have to absorb any increases in the cost of production. How long growers can continue under these conditions is anybody’s guess. Variable rate technology will likely become more important, and some farmers may even simply reduce the amount of fertilizer they apply, which will reduce yields.
“If pricing gets to be so unsustainable that you have to start cutting, you’ve already baked a yield hit into the pie. Now you’re trying to figure out how to balance yield versus input. That’s a really hard thing to do, at least in our area where you just cannot bank on the rains coming at reasonable moments,” Juris said, adding that he thinks 2026 is the calm before the storm.
“If you’re solely a spring wheat producer that bought your fertilizer in the current environment, you’re feeling the pain. But since the majority of the wheat in Washington state is winter wheat, short of any top dressing or anything like that, you’re kind of locked in at prewar pricing in terms of those inputs. We’ve yet to see the full effect of this war on any of the crop protection products. Crop year 2027 is going to be the one that is going to thin the herd significantly.”
