A new bill calls for weekly USDA fertilizer reports
Lawmakers have tabled a bill that if passed would provide farmers with transparency related to an important crop input.
House representatives and senators have introduced the Fertilizer Transparency Act.
If passed, the bipartisan-sponsored bill would require the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service to publish a weekly report of fertilizer prices from manufacturers.
The weekly dataset would include nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash, and for urea and UAN. The reports will include national, and when deemed appropriate by the ag secretary, state or regional information.
The USDA currently publishes this kind of report annually through a voluntary survey.
Farmers support this bill.
Additional transparency will help farmers when making important input decisions.
Each year, the fertilizer industry dictates the terms when Iowa corn farmers purchase inputs. We cannot sustain these conditions, and this legislation will bring fairness and transparency to a key input needed by corn growers to produce a high yielding crop,” Mark Mueller, president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, said in a statement. “The input price continues to be unbalanced in the cost of production for Iowa’s corn growers.”
“The continued high cost of fertilizer negatively impacts corn farmers’ bottom line. Since 2022, we have seen record-setting spikes in the price of fertilizer that have not decreased in a consequential way,” South Dakota Corn Growers Association President Trent Kubik said in a statement. “This bill will help to improve market signals by providing public access to meaningful pricing data.”
Fertilizer prices have caught the eye of other federal departments too.
In September 2025 the justice department and the USDA signed an MOU to investigate potential antitrust activity.
“The agencies are each committed to protecting American farmers from the burdens imposed by high and volatile input costs- such as feed, fertilizer, fuel, seed, equipment, pesticides, and other essential goods- while ensuring competitive supply chains, lower consumer prices, and the resilience of U.S. agriculture and the food supply,” the MOU says.