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Vice President- Fertilizer
Eight projects have been selected to advance under FIELDS, the federal funding program aimed at expanding U.S. fertilizer production, and they range from mobile anhydrous ammonia units to a plant that turns dairy manure into fertilizer. The FIELDS fertilizer program backs a mix of expansions at existing plants and newer technologies, yet none of the eight is a major new nitrogen or urea plant, leaving U.S. reliance on imported urea in place. The selections land as falling corn prices squeeze farm margins and rising natural gas prices threaten European nitrogen supplies. For U.S. farmers weighing input costs, the lineup matters less for next season than for how far it moves domestic fertilizer supply over the years ahead.
Josh Linville, StoneX VP of Fertilizer, oversees the firm's global fertilizer department, including its fertilizer trade desk and its analysis of fertilizer markets around the world. Based in Kansas City, he works across commodity risk management, pricing strategy and market research, with a particular focus on North American and global crop input markets.
The FIELDS fertilizer program splits its eight awards between expansions at established U.S. fertilizer plants and newer production models, specifically Talus Ag's mobile, smaller-scale anhydrous ammonia units, a multi-product plant in Peace Valley, Florida, PCI Nitrogen's ammonium sulfate and urea production, Intrepid Potash's sulfate of potash output, projects to stabilize hydrogen production and expand sulfur production, an organic agricultural byproduct fertilizer project, and Project Holdco's dairy manure conversion. Mobile fertilizer production is not new to the U.S., as demonstrated by the 10-34-0 reactors that already move from site to site. Linville points to the track record of that model, saying "the problem that we see in the past is that these mobile units, they're very high cost of production". As a result, mobile fertilizer units have historically needed large government subsidies or unusually tight fertilizer markets to make the economics work.
Project Holdco, a plan to turn dairy manure into fertilizer, received what Linville described as the single largest award among the FIELDS fertilizer program selections, yet its stated output is only a few thousand tons per year. That output figure is small enough that market participants have questioned whether it was reported correctly. Manure-based fertilizer also carries low nutrient content, which makes the product costly to move far from where it is produced. Consequently, the Project Holdco award adds little to the nitrogen supply U.S. growers depend on. According to Linville, "When you truly look at it, it still doesn't really hit the one thing we truly need, which is expanded major nitrogen production."
"I am going to guess it's going to take years before any of these have any sort of impact in terms of actual supply coming to the marketplace" , Linville says of the eight FIELDS fertilizer program projects. The FIELDS projects each cleared enough paperwork to win federal backing, yet construction is "still going to take a long time" before new fertilizer tonnage reaches U.S. farmers. Even combined, the projects' stated capacity falls well short of the several million tons of urea the U.S. imports each year. Despite that shortfall, steadier output at existing U.S. fertilizer plants could help reduce the production downtime buyers have been contending with.
--- Written by Frédéric Guétin, StoneX Media Producer
--- Expert: Josh Linville, StoneX VP of Fertilizer
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