Despite Rising Phosphate Prices, Fertilizer Giant Mosaic Plans to Cut Production
For farmers who are already worrying about whether they can afford fertilizer this year, the news gets worse. On May 11, 2026, the Mosaic Company announced that it will be cutting phosphate fertilizer production by 50 percent at its fertilizer plants located in Faustina, Louisiana, and Bartow, Florida.
Despite high fertilizer prices, Mosaic reported a net loss of $258 million for the first quarter of 2026. The company’s response is to curtail production, in hopes that concern about “a higher risk of negative yield impacts around the world” will “support further ag commodity price appreciation and normalized fertilizer demand.”
In other words, the company hopes that if the supply of fertilizer is constrained, farmers will be so worried about their yields that they will buy the recommended amount of fertilizer at a significantly higher-than-normal price.
What’s driving up the price of phosphate fertilizer? The culprit is the same one behind rising gas prices—the war in Iran and the pinch point at the Strait of Hormuz. In addition to driving up ammonia prices, which affects some phosphate fertilizers—like monoammonium phosphate (MAP) and diammonium phosphate (DAP)—the blockade has also caused sulfur shortages.
The Persian Gulf is a major exporter of sulfur. Forty-five percent of seaborne sulfur trade goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Russia, China, and Turkey have banned exports of sulfur in response to Iran’s blockade, further constraining supplies.
Though not included in the trio of primary plant fertilizer nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—sulfur has been an essential part of the chemical fertilizer industry since the 1840s. Sulfuric acid is used to make most phosphate fertilizers, including superphosphate, MAP, and DAP. Fifty to sixty percent of global sulfuric acid production is used in fertilizer production, and 25 percent of that sulfuric acid comes from the Persian Gulf.
How much impact will Mosaic’s production curtailment have on the American fertilizer industry? A lot. Mosaic mines 64 percent of the phosphate rock in the United States, manufactures 80 percent of domestic phosphate fertilizer, and controls over 90 percent of US phosphate fertilizer sales.
“At the end of the day, that’s going to hurt the American farmer,” Scott Metzger, president of the American Soybean Association, told Brownfield Ag News.
“When dominant firms reduce production during periods of supply stress, farmers are left exposed to even higher costs and greater volatility,” Farm Action reported in an analysis of the situation. “The result is a fertilizer system where supply disruptions, geopolitical instability, and corporate production decisions can quickly ripple through the farm economy—squeezing farmers while dominant firms retain significant control over the market.”
As eco-farmers know, there’s only one surefire way out of that squeeze—developing a production system that eliminates chemical fertilizers altogether. Cover crops, green manures, crop rotations, composting, and animal manure are all tried-and-true ways of keeping soil healthy and fertile. And they work whether or not a war on the other side of the world affects sulfur supplies.
