The Numbers Are In

The American Farm Bureau Federation polled farmers nationwide and found 70% say they cannot afford all the fertilizer they need for this planting season. According to Wisconsin Public Radio's coverage of the Farm Bureau data, only 19% of Southern farmers pre-booked fertilizer before the Iran war drove prices up. In the Midwest, that number was 67%, leaving one in three Midwestern farmers without locked-in supply.

What Prices Actually Did

Urea — the primary nitrogen fertilizer American farmers use — sat at $455 per ton on February 27, the day before the Iran conflict escalated. By late April, according to WPR, it had climbed to nearly $700 per ton. That's a 54% spike in roughly two months.

Diesel moved too. On-highway diesel was $3.81 per gallon the week the war began. By late April it was $5.35 per gallon. That's a 40% jump on the fuel that runs every tractor, combine, and delivery truck in American agriculture.

Texas farmer Russell Boening told PBS News he's paying 40% more for nitrogen right now compared to two or three months ago.

Real Farmers, Real Decisions

Iowa farmer Lance Lillibridge of Benton County told PBS he booked most of his fertilizer before the conflict — but not all of it, because prices were already high. His solution: skip that nutrient entirely this year. He said many other farmers are doing the same.

Oklahoma farmer Tommy Salisbury didn't pre-book at all. He told a Farm Bureau media briefing he held off because of low profits from 2025 combined with late-year drought. Now he's pivoting which crops he plants entirely — driven by the changed economics.

Minnesota farmer Megan Horsager told WPR she's set on fertilizer but didn't lock in fuel pricing. Her diesel tank runs dry this summer. "I'm just kicking myself that I didn't price more ahead of time," she said. "You don't plan on the global events."

These decisions will determine crop yields — and ultimately, grocery prices.

The Structural Problem

A research piece published in Nature examines why this crisis is worse than 2022's fertilizer shock.

Half of all food consumed globally depends on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers produced via the Haber-Bosch process, which uses natural gas as both feedstock and energy source. Natural gas accounts for 70-80% of ammonia production costs. That means every energy disruption automatically becomes a food disruption.

The Strait of Hormuz normally handles about 38% of global crude oil, 29% of liquefied petroleum gas, and 13% of chemicals including fertilizers, according to Nature. That passage is now effectively choked off. Urea prices jumped 46% in a single month after the blockade tightened.

The World Food Programme has warned that more than 360 million people face acute food insecurity in 2026, with tens of millions at risk of famine. American farmers are in the same supply chain.

What the Government Is Actually Doing

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told PBS News on April 6 that "everything was on the table" to help affected farmers. She noted that roughly 80% of farmers locked in fertilizer last fall, meaning only 20-25% didn't — and that her department is "working directly" to ensure those farmers can get what they need without going bankrupt.

That framing differs from the Farm Bureau's own survey. If 70% of farmers say they can't afford all the fertilizer they need, pre-booking at lower prices means insulation from the worst of the spike, not immunity to margin pressure from rising fuel, equipment, and logistics costs.

Rollins has been in 36 days of crisis management on this. "Everything on the table" needs to become something specific — fast.

What Mainstream Coverage Is Missing

Most outlets are treating this as a war story with an agriculture footnote. The real story is a structural vulnerability that has now triggered twice in four years — 2022 with Russia-Ukraine, 2026 with Iran. Each time, the energy-to-fertilizer-to-food pipeline snaps in the same place.

The Nature analysis is explicit: fertilizer production needs to be treated as critical national infrastructure. There is no strategic fertilizer reserve the way there's a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. There is no domestic nitrogen production mandate. American food security depends on a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf that the U.S. does not control.

What This Means for Prices

Farmers skipping nutrients this spring means lower yields this fall. Lower yields mean tighter supply. Tighter supply means higher prices at the checkout counter.

Without structural change on fertilizer supply, Americans will be having this conversation again in 2028.