NPR interviewed IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Rob Vos for a Morning Edition segment on how fertilizer shortages resulting from the Iran war could affect U.S. food prices.
While higher fertilizer costs could lead to smaller harvests and modest increases in retail food prices, farmers are likely to bear most of the burden because they have limited bargaining power. As Vos explained, farmers don’t have much bargaining power to negotiate with wholesalers for higher crop prices when their operating costs rise, “Those buyers will go to other farmers to try and get it cheaper.”
Speaking about when fertilizer sector could returns to normal, Vos estimated that “it could take weeks or months for fertilizer manufacturing plants to come back online and return to previous production levels. If high prices stick around, that could snarl the plans of U.S. farmers preparing to plant cool-season crops this autumn, he added.”