Tightening nitrogen fertilizer supplies raise alarm

The head of the world’s leading fertilizer company is worried that food production will falter as nitrogen fertilizer supplies tighten.

“We are deeply concerned about the state of global agriculture,” Svein Tore Holsether, president of Yara International, said during the company’s third quarter 2022 conference call.

Fertilizer supplies are being squeezed as manufacturers curtail production due to sky-high natural gas prices. That is happening amid what Holsether described as an “escalating food crisis.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimates there are 1.3 billion food-insecure people in 77 low- and middle-income countries in 2022, up 10 percent from last year due to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.

Farmers around the world will likely be lowering their application rates of nitrogen fertilizer due to high prices of the vital crop input.