Sean Dengler.

These Trump tariffs are something. People say this is how we fix the economy. Others say everything’s price will go up. If they happen, it will be somewhere in between. When one wants to encourage domestic production, tariffs make sense. One also must have the right policies in place to encourage domestic production. When the tariffs come off, these domestic industries will not succeed on their own if they are non-competitive markets due to foreign or multinational companies.

As a former farmer, what do I know? I know these tariffs will significantly impact fertilizer prices, specifically potash. Since the 1980s, fertilizer companies have consolidated. CF, Mosaic, and Nutrien have control over their respective fertilizer, nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium in the U.S. markets. This consolidation has led to adverse impacts for farmers like paying higher prices for less innovation.

For example, according to Farm Action, in 1975, United States fertilizer plants produced approximately 12.3 million metric tons of fixed nitrogen, 12.9 million metric tons of fixed phosphorus, and 2.3 million metric tons of fixed potassium for use in fertilizers. Between 1975 and 2015, domestic consumption of fixed nitrogen per crop year went up by more than half (from approximately 7.8 million metric tons in 1975 to 11.8 million in 2015), and the consumption of phosphate and potash fertilizers remained roughly constant. Production, however, plummeted over the same period, reaching approximately 8.4 million metric tons of fixed nitrogen, 7.7 million metric tons of fixed phosphorus, and just 0.7 million metric tons of fixed potassium in 2015.

What do these numbers mean? The United States did not run out of fertilizer, but it does mean these companies are incentivized not to produce fertilizer due to their monopolistic control of the market. These companies make more money while rural communities and farmers get the short end of the stick. Bring back the tie dye shirts and bell bottoms because it is time to break these companies up and create competition like it was 1975. This will lead to better outcomes for our communities and farmers.

These companies will not change on their own. “The high price of fertilizers over the past decade and a half is a product of calculated efforts by CF, Mosaic, and Nutrien to cut industry capacity and engineer a chronic shortage of fertilizer supplies in U.S. markets.” As Commissioner Johanson of the International Trade Commission has found, both Mosaic and Nutrien have followed a “playbook” in recent years of acquiring or merging with competitors and then closing down their “redundant” potash and phosphate plants. Over the same period, CF appears to have followed a different, though just as anti-competitive, playbook of predatory pricing and bait-and-switch expansion announcements.”

Specifically in the potash realm, plants across the United States and Canada have shut down due to corporate consolidation according to Farm Action. “In Nutrien’s case, less than a year after its formation out of the PotashCorp-Agrium merger in 2018, the combined firm shut down two of its predecessors’ five phosphate plants (Redwater and Geismar). At the same time, Nutrien permanently shut down one (New Brunswick) and temporarily mothballed three (Allan, Vanscoy, and Lanigan) of its predecessor’s seven potash mining and refining facilities. A few months later, Nutrien returned Allan and Lanigan to operation, but it kept Vanscoy offline until 2020 — when the facility was finally reopened with nearly half the operational capacity it had before the Agrium-PotashCorp merger.”

These companies know what they are doing. They are playing the system at the expense of rural communities and farmers. While these tariffs can increase the cost of fertilizer, this is only a symptom of a bigger issue. Hopefully, these companies will open or reopen their facilities in the United States. It is also time to enforce the antitrust laws and break these fertilizer companies up. Once the tariffs go away, we go back to square one where farmers are at the mercy of these monopolistic markets. Create more competition, create better outcomes for farmers and rural Iowa.

Sean Dengler is a writer, comedian, farmer, and host of the Pandaring Talk podcast who grew up on a farm between Traer and Dysart. You can reach him at sean.h.dengler@gmail.com.