Fertilizer Trends.

IaGary

Well-known Member
Fertilizer prices have been slowly falling. Mainly because of the lack of buyer interest. Due to low commodity prices.

The average retail prices are as follows.

Potash $561 per ton

Phosphate at $547 per ton. In MAP form

Urea $405 or per ton this equates to .44 per unit

Anhydrous Ammonia $631 or .38 per unit

UAN 28% N at 289 a ton or .52 per unit. 32% is the same price per unit.

This is a national average so your prices will vary.

Gary
 
(quoted from post at 06:01:07 11/22/15) Fertilizer prices have been slowly falling. Mainly because of the lack of buyer interest. Due to low commodity prices.

The average retail prices are as follows.

Potash $561 per ton

Phosphate at $547 per ton. In MAP form

Urea $405 or per ton this equates to .44 per unit

Anhydrous Ammonia $631 or .38 per unit

UAN 28% N at 289 a ton or .52 per unit. 32% is the same price per unit.

This is a national average so your prices will vary.

Gary

OK but what's the average price per acre for say corn? Average soil conditions.

Rick
 
Could part of that be due to crude oil prices hovering around the $40 mark?
Oil is heavily related to fertilizer production.
 
in my area; dryland. i put down 125# of actual N and 50# actual of phosphate for corn. do the math and you'll find that when you toss in the high cost of seed, that i can't make raising dryland corn pencil out!!!!!
 
Average per acre doesn't really mean anything. Too much depends on location, soil, manure applied, etc., etc.
 
Two years ago I was hauling fertilizer. Five days a week ten hours a day.Now the plant is shut down and what little we do sell. Has to be shipped to us in one ton bags. We might fill one buggy a month.
 
You need to factor in yield and the price of corn to determine the best level of fertilizer
application---and these are the two biggest wild cards over which you have very little
control.

Ben
 
Ours here are still much above that, but then everyone is still using broadcast. It's not uncommon to have the Co-op call and see if you are done with a cart because they are out. I'd say a third of us have liquid in furrow, but it is so expensive that no one uses the upper end of the rate. We all use that as a supplement to the starter we broadcast.

I keep thinking those prices will hit here since fuel is low. Hasn't happened. I think a lot of it has to do with how progressive the Co-op is and what they are pushing.
 
What yield goal??

I put on about a 180-75-90 for a yield goal of 200 bu per acre. Then nothing for beans the following year. Only the acres going to corn get fert with a heavy charge to help the beans the next year.

About $150
 
Yeah their are guys around here who skip on fertilizer as well. Their yields show it to.
 
IaGary,i like your market reports postings and other pricing info.nice to get a feel for what goes on in other parts of the country.thanks
 
I just heard a lecture from one of his cohorts.

Some interesting ideas, it still seems like mining the land, if you are hauling crops away, either you add P and K and micros back, or you are mining.

Maybe some day I could meet them half way tho.

Paul
 
I am involved on the retail side of fertilizer business. You will not see a big drop in fertilizer cost this year. The reason??? The fertilizer you use is already bought and under contract. So the fertilizer for next year is already in the pipe line so to speak. So the local price will not change much.

A large part of the fertilizer in the mid west is imported. Most of the potash these last few years has came out of Western Europe. So it is already mined and in transit to here. The price is already determined before it is loaded. If the price is not what they can live with then they do not ship it period. There is NO spot market on this fertilizer.

The only fertilizer you MIGHT see any movement on is liquid nitrogen and Anhydrous. These two products are still most produced here in the US. They are also usually produced closer to the actually application time than the dry products. So they can still react to lower energy prices and demand.

As to what we are seeing on demand??? There are many more soil samples but the larger farmers are applying just about what they normally do. If they do not have a good yield they have zero hope of making the whole thing work.

You MIGHT be able to cut your rates if your soils is truly built up but that is a year or two at the most before you adversely effect your yields more than you save. As for the fellow in Ohio that is saying he does not apply fertilizer. HE is selling a line of BS. If you can live with 70-80 bushel corn and 20-25 bushel beans than try what he is doing. He has been jumping around on rented ground and mining the fertility out an moving on. There are enough dumb/absentee landlords that he can do this.
 
It should also be stated that as other countries increase their usage of fertilizer that the US share of the overall volume sold is shrinking as a percentage. This in turn makes non-domestic producers less sensitive to the US ag economy. My supplier many years ago stated that the pricing strategy on the wholesale end reflects the desire to extract more dollars from top producers versus marginal ones. Which is to say marginal producers can be sacrificed in terms of sales volume if the same or higher net profit can be extracted from the remaining customer base. Any soil science instructor will tell you there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to fertility which means plants use definite volumes of nutrients whether they already exist in the soil or come from application. Once removed from the soil a farmer can either bring the level back up to what it was previous to the last crop or have less available nutrients for the next crop. As you stated crops such as corn it is all or nothing in terms of applied fertilizer. It only makes sense to fertilize to get the maximum yield possible as it is in the last quartile of yield where profit is realized and that is based on the expectation that the crop will run in excess of 175 bushels per acre. Planting with a goal of under that means there will be no return beyond cost so don't bother with ground that only yields 130-140 bushel corn best case scenario.
 

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