As Republicans feign moving against meat packers Koch driving spikes in fertilizer costs

In red states like South Dakota freedom equals the right to pollute. 

Recall Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling or MCOOL was repealed during the second Obama term to shield American commodities from scrutiny because every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in the United States is contaminated with atrazine, neonicotinoids, glyphosate, dicamba, DDT, mercury, lead, cadmium, PFAS, E. coli, Imazalil plus other toxins and pathogens. 

Now Republican candidates risk biting the hands that feed them. Meat packer Cargill has given big bucks to Republican senators like John Thune and Mike Rounds and to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. Rounds says he wants a federal investigation into allegations of antitrust violations by packers and for MCOOL to be reinstated.

Former Governor Rounds was elected to the US Senate with cash from the Kochs’ National Federation of Independent Business. The so-called “Americans for Prosperity” is a Koch-soaked dark money group with an agent in Sioux Falls. South Dakota's GOP legislators and candidates enjoy millions in lobbyist benefits from the Kochs and their American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC.

Koch Industries' relationship with the late Republican Kansas Senator Bob Dole not only helped to delegitimize the issue of oil theft it allowed the company to build an ecoterrorism empire. Charles Koch was a member of the John Birch Society and Koch Industries has given loads of cash to Mike Rounds, Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson and John Thune.

Today Koch is one of four corporations that control the production and sale of nitrogen-based fertilizer in the US. The others are Yara-USA, CF Industries and Nutrien so the Family Farm Action Alliance, a 501c3 non-profit group has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the reasons behind the avaricious rises in fertilizer prices. 

The United States gets much of its nitrogen fertilizer from Belarus through 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. Nitrogen fertilizer is normally applied to subsidized corn then ends right back up in the Gulf of Mexico where it kills whole ecosystems.

Ammonia prices have skyrocketed in the Midwest, with Koch announcing new levels as high as $1,100 per short ton (t) free-on-board (FOB) at its Corn Belt terminals and plants -- a near two-fold increase on prices of $650 to $680 in the Midwest seen at the end September. CF and other producers and sellers in the region followed Koch, with CF setting a new price in the Northern Plains and Iowa of $1,200/t FOB for overpull delivery volumes. [Global, Domestic Fertilizer Prices Continue to Rise]

Learn how the Republican Party has become the John Birch Society linked here.