By Ryan Hanrahan
Bloomberg’s Ilena Peng and Michael Hirtzer reported that “the Trump administration is seeking information from farmers to help with an ongoing Justice Department probe into high costs for fertilizer, machinery and other farm inputs.”
“US Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden said he has met with officials at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to discuss lines of inquiry, and knows that ‘farmers have a lot of information that might be relevant to these investigations,'” Peng and Hirtzer reported. “The Department of Justice is investigating whether fertilizer producers colluded to raise prices, Bloomberg reported in early March.”
“‘We need farmers to help provide us with that information on a confidential basis, so that that can help inform the investigations that are ongoing,’ Vaden said at the North American Agricultural Journalists’ annual conference in Washington on Monday,” Peng and Hirtzer reported. “‘I think we will have a mechanism in order to help encourage that exchange of information.'”
“The fertilizer industry has faced scrutiny as only a handful of producers account for most of the US’s supply of crop nutrients, and prices have never fully cooled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 upset supplies,” Peng and Hirtzer reported. “The administration has tried to tamp down production costs for farmers, a key voting bloc that is largely backing President Donald Trump even as his trade policies have hurt crop prices and restricted some fertilizer imports. The war on Iran has sent fertilizer prices surging even further.”
Source : illinois.edu