Analysts warn farmers to ‘mentally prepare’ for high prices through spring 2027

American farmers should begin planning financially for elevated fertilizer costs to persist well into the 2027 planting season, according to Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizer at StoneX Group, who told Agweek that the structural nature of the Hormuz supply disruption means relief will arrive later than most producers hope.

“My best advice right now is to mentally prepare for this to continue for longer than you want it to,” Linville said. The Strait of Hormuz crisis has removed production and logistics capacity that cannot be quickly replaced, he said, and the effect on fertilizer pricing will outlast the conflict itself — a pattern consistent with the persistence seen after the 2021–2022 price spike, which took more than two years to fully unwind.

Linville pointed to a triple supply compression across all three major nutrients. For nitrogen, Brazil’s ongoing structural shift toward ammonium sulphate as a lower-cost urea substitute is pulling demand away from the market’s most visible benchmark while adding no new supply. For phosphate, the simultaneous closure of Gulf shipping routes and China’s continued phosphate export restrictions — in place since December 2025 — have removed the two largest swing suppliers at once. Potash remains the relatively most affordable nutrient segment, though it too is running well above pre-conflict levels.

The global context underscores Linville’s warning. Brazil imports roughly 85% of the fertilizers its agriculture consumes, with Russia alone supplying 14.7 million tonnes — 32.2% of Brazil’s total fertilizer imports — in 2025. Russia’s new export quota of 20 million tonnes running June 1 through November 30 adds further supply uncertainty for the southern hemisphere’s 2026-27 crop season. At the same time, U.S. urea prices are running roughly 50% above year-ago levels, with anhydrous ammonia up 43% annually, according to DTN data for the third week of May.

Source: Agweek