By Ryan Hanrahan
The United States Department of Agriculture is taking new steps to expand domestic fertilizer production, Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a press conference Tuesday, including accelerated permitting and the reviving of a Biden administration grant program to boost U.S. fertilizer production.
The aim of the new moves is to boost domestic fertilizer production by about 4.5 million tons per year, supporting roughly 400,000 producers and 290 million acres of farmland, Rollins said, though she didn’t provide a time estimate of when new fertilizer production could actually be online and available for farmers.
“Every tool in the toolkit has to be reviewed and analyzed. We are very bullish on this potential policy plan that we’re putting into place,” she said. “For the long term, we’re fixing this. For the short term, until the conflict is over in Iran, we’ll continue to look at things like lifting the countervailing duty in Morocco, lifting transport rules, etc.”
Officials Say They Will Accelerate Permitting for Fertilizer Projects
Progressive Farmer’s Chris Clayton reported that “in their efforts to show the Trump administration is focused on bringing down fertilizer prices, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins led another press event on Tuesday at USDA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., to tout the permitting push for what will be considered ‘the world’s largest low-carbon ammonia production facility,’ led by CF Industries.”
On the $4 billion Blue Point low carbon-ammonia plant, “Adam Tell, the assistant secretary for the Army for Civil Works, said, ‘this project was mired in Green New Deal red tape,’ but the Trump administration expects to announce a decision on it within 45 days,” Clayton reported. “Tell also said the Army Corps of Engineers in the past few days has issued a memorandum to all 39 districts that fertilizer projects should not be deterred by red tape.”
Source : illinois.edu