GOOD NEWS:

Fertilizer prices down 40 per cent

Farmers Forum staff

OTTAWA — A resilient global market has reacted to drive down the cost of fertilizer from record highs reached when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Fertilizer prices have since fallen (as of September 2023) by over 40 %.
Nothing fixes high prices like high prices, so the saying goes, and Farm Credit Canada senior economist Leigh Anderson observed that those high fertilizer prices spurred a bump in supply alongside a drop in fertilizer demand in the world’s poorest agricultural regions. Declining prices resulted and have continued their downward trend for the past year. Anderson expects further declines into 2024 but suggests prices will recover as seeding approaches.

He also foresees a 2.8 % drop in diesel prices in 2024.

MacEwen Agricentre owner Jim MacEwen, in Eastern Ontario, described global fertilizer prices as “still higher than we’d like to see.”

Hensall Co-op crop retail manager Jim Barclay said he agreed with that sentiment. “Where grain prices are, I think fertilizer prices are still concerning. I think we want to see fertilizer prices coming down if grain prices are coming down.”