Colorado farmers face high fertilizer prices ahead of growing season

DELTA, Colo. — For farmer Brent Hines, spring is a stressful time of year, full of last minute decisions that will affect how his crops fare months in advance. 

But this year, Hines must contend with another challenge: how to afford the fertilizer he needs to raise onions, sweet corn and pinto beans on his 900 acre farm. 

Since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, prices for fertilizer inputs like nitrogen and phosphate have spiked by more than 30%. 

Roughly a third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer exports, as well as fertilizer components like sulfur, pass through the now-effectively closed Strait of Hormuz, according to Reuters.  

The shortage is adding additional stress to farmers ahead of spring planting season and could disrupt the global food supply. 

Fertilizer prices were climbing even before the war. Urea, the most common solid nitrogen fertilizer, is 60% more expensive than this time last year. 

"It's outrageous," Hines said. "Fuel's up, seed went up… all our inputs just keep going up." 

Meanwhile, commodity prices have remained low, owing to market disruptions like China’s decision in 2025 to drastically reduce the number of soybeans it buys from the U.S. 

Leafy greens like mustard, turnips, collards, cabbage and spinach, as well as broccoli and sweet corn, require large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer. Conventional agriculture, which often relies on chemical fertilizers to replenish nutrients in the soil, accounts for 99% of U.S. farmland. 

The U.S. imported 25% of its fertilizer in 2024. Countries such as Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have become massive exporters of fertilizer thanks to their large reserves of natural gas, which are used to make ammonia. 

If fertilizer shortages persist, some analysts have argued they could cause food shortages. 

“This will be a global crisis — it’s not as easy as just importing foods. In the global south the implications might be even larger as there may be famine in certain parts of the world,” Babak Hafezi, adjunct professor of international business at American University said in an interview with The Food Institute.

Every season, Hines uses roughly 12 semi-truck loads of 32-0-0 liquid nitrogen fertilizer to feed his crops, alongside a mountain of phosphate. He bought 30% of the phosphate and 20% of the nitrogen fertilizer he needs for the season in January, before prices spiked. Hines can’t store more than a few truckloads at a time, so he must buy throughout the season. 

This year, he plans to cut the amount of phosphate he uses by half, but it’s nearly impossible to cut nitrogen inputs for the crops he grows. 

Reducing fertilizer can lower yields and reduce the size of vegetables, he said. 

“For sweet corn, you either make a perfect ear or it’s unsellable,” Hines said. The same is true for onions, which must reach a certain size in order to sell. 

At Fagerberg Farms in Eaton, farm manager Brian King oversees 3,000 cultivated acres. King bought half of his fertilizer in January. Prices were half of what they are now. 

He hopes his current supply will last long enough for prices to stabilize or go down. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. The Treasury Department announced that it was taking immediate steps to increase imports of fertilizer from Venezuela. 

But Reuters reported that “increasing fertilizer production in Venezuela's stressed economy and political situation will be a challenge requiring billions of dollars… It will not be a quick fix.” 

For farmers like Hines and King, upward pressure on commodity prices could help them to absorb some of the rising cost of inputs. But whether that happens is anyone’s guess. There are so many moving parts, Glennis McClure, an extension educator in the agricultural economics department at the University of Nebraska, said. 

“Restaurants or grocery stores, they just raise their prices. We don’t have that choice,” said Hines. 

For King, fertilizer prices are just one item on a long list of headaches. 

“Regulations are probably our biggest enemy right now, not fertilizer prices,” King said. Labor costs, herbicide restrictions, such as Dacthal which the EPA banned in 2024, and water shortages are more pressing problems, he said. 

This year's unusually warm and dry winter wrapped with Colorado's Democratic Governor Jared Polis activating the Colorado Drought Task Force. Most of the state is in moderate to severe drought.

But with little control over what might happen next, King has learned to become “an eternal optimist.”  

“I just hope my optimism is real at some point,” he said.