Ammonium nitrate and urea’s synthesis is from natural gas. The USA has natural gas in abundance. We can not build plants overnight to do this process. We can build them and be totally independent of foreign supplies. We could become the world leader in exports of this product.
We are not due to the fact we could get it cheap from Russian and the Ukraine. That day is over and will not come back.
The solution is simple:
Drill and build. We would then become a net exporter of petroleum and in the future a net exporter of nitrate fertilizers.
ps
New York State has one of the greatest natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale. They also have the highest prices for natural gas as they refuse to exploit the bounty that lays beneath there feet. Pennsylvania next door does use this bounty and sells it to New York at great profit. Idiots abound in the New York State government.
See below link explaining the synthesis.
https://www.fertilizerseurope.com/fertilizers-in-europe/how-fertilizers-are-made/
Like Slow Joe is gonna let us make more of anything.
So, I think most us farmers bought fertilizer on the way up in the late fall early winter. We paid more and may have cut back a little to justify, but you gotta have it. My realization is what will happen this fall if it does not go down. Or will it be like gasoline at 4 and then we will think it is cheap at 3??. And there is also a rail strike in Canada where we get fertilizer supplies.
The point is that fertilizer has tripled to quadrupled. Yes, beans, corn and wheat have gained which is helpful, but what about beef and grass and hay??? Beef has not gained at the farm level. I guess we will have to take the Bill Gates route and go all SYNTHETIC beef. Yuk!
So, like anything, we can adjust for one year I suppose. But when you see SloJo or Kamalahahahaha for the forseeable future it does cause indigestion for the farmer or small business person.