Nitrogen fertilizer is normally applied to subsidized corn then ends up in the Gulf of Mexico where it kills whole ecosystems.
The United States gets most of its nitrogen fertilizer from the Persian Gulf but a Trump era tariff and Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico slowed the movement of product to markets up and down the Mississippi River. Anhydrous is selling for $1,113/ton increasing 38% from just last month.
High natural gas prices are contributing to the price spike so some utilities want to raise rates exacerbating a rise in inflation. According to Creighton University's Ernie Goss rising interest rates and inflation are already affecting the supply chain but those conditions seem like a problem only for those of us who aren’t billionaires. That land-locked states have higher inflation rates should come as little surprise as transportation costs mount but as fuel prices increase emissions should decrease reducing the rise in greenhouse gases.
In 2015 under President Obama the US Environmental Protection Agency moved to more closely identify the sources of non-point pollution. Despite a judge's ruling EPA went forward with a new federal rule protecting small streams, tributaries and wetlands. The Waters of the United States (WOTUS) legislation sought to give authority to the EPA to use some teeth to enforce the rights of people downstream to have clean water even from some sources that the US Geological Survey has already identified as impaired.
Today, President Joe Biden has established a task force to determine the social costs of carbon and has required federal agencies to immediately begin applying their findings in their regulatory actions and other decision-making. The re-registration of some agricultural herbicides is on the EPA's agenda so are biofuels and the Renewable Fuels Standard.
Ethanol profit margins are at near record levels but raising subsidized corn for ethanol is a major contributor to the dead zone in the Gulf.
Learn more at Progressive Farmer.
ip photo: a farmstead fades from the Coteau des Prairies near the South Dakota/Minnesota border.
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) November 13, 2021
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