American farmers dealt new blow as Trump's Iran war escalates
Source: msn
Jesus Mesa • 4h •
As the U.S.–Israeli bombardment of Iran continues with no end in sight, the economic shockwaves are already hitting American farmers, with some struggling to buy fertilizer and gasoline prices rising.
The war zone sits at the crossroads of the world’s fertilizer supply. Since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran a week ago, maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a near standstill. The waterway moves roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily oil and a quarter of its nitrogen fertilizer.
Chet Edinger, a corn and soybean farmer from Mitchell, South Dakota, saw it coming. As soon as the news broke, he rushed to lock in one last load of urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer, the morning the strikes began. He paid 22 percent more than he had late last year, the highest price he had ever seen.
Days later, the market froze entirely.
“You can’t even buy it right now if you wanted to,” he told Newsweek. “Because all the supplies are tied up with their existing customers.”
The Fertilizer Cliff
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Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/american-farmers-dealt-new-blow-as-trump-s-iran-war-escalates/ar-AA1XT5fB?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=8460701b1a2c4de7b540eab1e00f9bb0&ei=8
NOW, because of Trumps Iran war--there is Another reason for grocery prices to rise!!
Urea barge prices at the Port of New Orleans jumped from $475 per ton the week before the strikes to $683 by March 6. Iran controls 10 to 12 % of global urea exports. Qatar accounts for 11% of global supply, shut down liquefied natural gas production
Urea barge prices at the Port of New Orleans jumped from 5 per ton the week before the strikes to 3 by March 6. Iran controls 10 to 12 % of global urea exports. Qatar accounts for 11% of global supply, shut down liquefied natural gas production
— (@oceancalm.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T12:36:05.832Z
www.msn.com/en-us/news/w...
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Walleye
(44,898 posts)He doesn’t even understand business we need certainty in business. All he knows is “deals“ and nobody trusts him to make a deal anyway. I noticed every time he has a phone conversation with Putin. He starts talking about how our elections are “rigged“ again. It’s obvious he hates his fellow Americans, and thinks we’re all liars and cheaters. I’m sick of it.
Irish_Dem
(81,426 posts)Nothing else is on his radar screen.
AleksS
(1,719 posts)They'll vote for him and republicans no matter how hard he beats them down. Does he really need to know any more?
Multichromatic
(147 posts)
murielm99
(32,990 posts)everyone comes out and blames all farmers. We farm. We are Democrats. We work hard to elect Democrats. We try our best to convince our fellow farmers to vote for Democrats. Maybe you can find a way to do something positive as well.
travelingthrulife
(5,214 posts)My Dad was a Democrat and a farmer. But he was a rarity.
Irish_Dem
(81,426 posts)
walkingman
(10,890 posts)although most say they believe in personal responsibility are the first to the government trough when it comes to subsidies and bailouts. That along with lack of diversity in most rural areas in a perfect fit for the GOP demonization of anyone other than whites.
Skittles
(171,791 posts)no big surprise
murielm99
(32,990 posts)I work hard to GOTV. What do you do?
Irish_Dem
(81,426 posts)And I don't have to answer to anyone about it.
murielm99
(32,990 posts)I have been campaigning for Democrats since I helped my dad campaign for Adlai Stevenson. I get sick of the stereotyping and accusatory tone around here.
multigraincracker
(37,674 posts)Got the bucks to wait it out. Make more small guys go out of business. Buy those farms for pennies on the dollar. End up doubling their bank accounts.
Then they plan on hiring all those farmers for $9.00/hr.
Win win.
Until we start eating the rich, it ain’t gonna change.
littlemissmartypants
(33,778 posts)the willingness to build bridges, not quagmires. To fail to see everyone with humanitarian respect. To value those who have generational respect for land and the compulsion to provide for humanity at large by being stewards of the planet and feeding their families.
It's remarkable, to me, how so many who have no first-hand knowledge of a subject are eager to speak on it.
I'll be impressed if an old wooden mule plow, a pile of wooden tobacco sticks, or stacks of wooden potato baskets live in one's memory or even better in their own barn.
Agriculture is constantly changing, and farmers today are some of the most compassionate forward-thinking and innovative business people on the planet.
It's past time to stop beating them down and start lifting them up. Otherwise, be prepared to grow your own food and get healthier as you eat it.
Decisions start with each person's pocketbook guided by their brains and hopefully their hearts.
Individual people are the growers of their own output. Some grow flowers. Others unfortunately decide to grow weeds.
PDF DOWNLOAD
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2025/Census22_HL_FamilyFarms_FINAL.pdf
❤️pants
multigraincracker
(37,674 posts)Half of his work was research and the other half was Extension, advising farmers. I had a lot of summer jobs on farms. One was a university research farm. Learned something about it. Seemed many family farmers were slow to make use of new research.
He was a leader in selective breeding in dairy farms. Had a very hard time getting most of them switch there methods, even though he could prove they could improve their herds at a very low cost. He ended up doing it by going to the banks and making it more difficult to get a loan without adopting some proven methods in breeding their herds. For a very low cost they could make a lot more money. Eventually almost all switched and milk production in the state skyrocketed. It became one of the first industries to rely on computers to select sires for each individual cow. Long story short
multigraincracker
(37,674 posts)40 head of registered herds.
Now they’ve moved on to mega herds milking hundreds of cows. Kind of made large farms more common. But it worked as good if not better for those milking 40 cows. The small farms were more efficient as they paid more attention to each cow.
eppur_se_muova
(41,976 posts)Those are the considerations that carry weight in DC.
Big Ag brings in the money. As far as your Congress is concerned, all the other guys just have an expensive hobby. That's why it's so safe for GOP to ignore them, except for photo ops.
Orange Buffoon
(245 posts)Good luck trying to find a Democrat farmer at morning coffee in my hometown.
littlemissmartypants
(33,778 posts)murielm99
(32,990 posts)Multichromatic
(147 posts)ALL famers are not MAGA. But, a lot of farmers are. So, yes THIS inflation is what Republican MAGA farmers voted for when they voted for corrupt GOP "leadership".
Vote for a clown... get a circus. If anyone votes Republican they are definitely ALWAYS voting for theft, grifting, foreign wars, illegal unconstitutional actions, corruption of the court, and a long list of other criminal behavior from Trump and the GOP.
I'm just sick of hearing MAGA yell... but I didn't vote for that!!! I just voted to own the libtards, to hurt poor single mothers, and POC. I didn't think Trump would hurt ME!
gopiscrap
(24,737 posts)
mwmisses4289
(4,223 posts)"Owning the libs and making them suffer" was just sssooo much more important than voting for competent leadership. Too bad the "libs" aren't "owned". And you are reaping the consequences of your stupidity.
radical noodle
(10,601 posts)With far higher prices for food and other products that depend on fertilizer for a decent crop.
NNadir
(38,093 posts)murielm99
(32,990 posts)I have won some converts to the Democratic Party. We just have to keep working and staying on top of the issues.
All farmers are not villains. All Southerners are not villains.
NNadir
(38,093 posts)...inaccurate.
My demographic is littered with asshole Magats but I'm certainly not one of them.
The reality is that we need to have people who voted for the orange pedophile see the light if we have any hope of saving what is left of our country (and the world).
I've seen a few who now recognize their awful mistake.
mwmisses4289
(4,223 posts)They seem to be the ones most surprised by the fact that their savior is hurting them. The rest...well, you did try to warn them, not your fault it fell on deaf ears.
UpInArms
(55,001 posts)Who is a farmer and a good democrat last week. In this sea of red, he told me of a person who responded to rising fuel prices with “fuel always goes up when the farmers have to go in the fields, that’s the only reason for higher prices”
niyad
(132,564 posts)popsdenver
(2,319 posts)are able to buy "Red" diesel, and the price they get is free from the federal/state fuel taxes we all pay........
You would think that after Trump screwed the Soy Bean farmers over in his first time in the white house they would have learned and not voted for him yet a second time........
Like some one else pointed out here, during the first screwing over, countless multi-generational farmers went bust, their farms and equipment getting sucked up by huge corporate farms, for pennies on the dollar. The Corporate Farms are gonna make a fortune this time around........
Bengus81
(10,176 posts)They have $12B supposedly coming and like in his first term he will raise that amount and raise it and raise it. They can ALL be bought off by that POS just like they were in his first term.
They griped and whined about losing soybean sales to China after Trump fucked that up in his first term. He eventually sent them billions and billions in subsidy's.
Those farmers in Kansas that bitched and screamed in his first term voted for him by 80%-90% in Kansas in 2024.
popsdenver
(2,319 posts)The only difference between the street walker whores and Republicans is:
There are several things, that the crack and meth whores WILL NOT DO, FOR ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY........
Icanthinkformyself
(389 posts)voting against their own self interest. We are all paying a heavy price with more damage to follow because the MAGA cult is infantile. Are the farmers who voted for the Convicted Felon known pedophile happy that they will soon be working for the corporations that are buying up the farm land? They will be paying rent to those entities for the house built on the land that the farmers once owned. 'Company towns' will become the norm, again.
Random Boomer
(4,407 posts)There are a lot of nostalgic myths about farmers and farming in America which lead to this question of why farmers vote Republican.
I highly recommend listening to a few Farm to Tabler podcasts, in which Tabler outlines exactly why so many farmers vote Republican.
As she outlines the history, most small farmers were squeezed out of agriculture decades ago. These days the majority of farmers are millionaires, and they vote Trump for all the same reasons that other millionaire Republicans vote for Trump.
durablend
(9,276 posts)
Old Crank
(7,101 posts)About a 40% jump in a week or so.
I don't know how much they use but that gets expensive for large acreages.
durablend
(9,276 posts)"Like the good old days before all that gubermint interference stuff" 
Vogon_Glory
(10,302 posts)Democrats should make it a point to tie the economic crises of the Trump and GW Bush years to the Republican Party.
FDR ran against Herbert Hoover for years after the 1932 elections. I don’t know how long the shelf life of the memory of Trump’s second term will last, but I’d bet on at least half a decade.
mwooldri
(10,818 posts)Urea is a main ingredient in Diesel Exhaust Fluid. So diesel prices are up, now DEF prices will go up... Another factor to drive freight costs higher. Which will end up with the consumer paying more. 
underpants
(196,580 posts)They don’t think ANYTHING through at all
NJCher
(43,204 posts)Broccoli plants and a few barrels of compost if that helps any. 
Mysterian
(6,512 posts)They CARE about the important issues affecting your lives...... Jesus, drag queens, and most important...GUNS!
travelingthrulife
(5,214 posts)
markodochartaigh
(5,545 posts)They may end up seeing their farms, which have been in their families for 150 years, sold off at auction to hedge funds, just like they have seen periodically since the Reagan days, leaving their children no choice but to move to the big city and try and compete in the shrinking job market. But at least they don't have to see the .002% of athletes who are trans accepted as competitors in college sports. Or see the 1% of the population who are trans use a restroom marked for people not of their birth gender. Or see the 0% of kids who identify as pets use litterboxes in schools. Or have their pets eaten by the 0% of Haitians who eat pets. Or hear the president champion workers rights as he becomes the only president in US history to actually walk a picket line.
Losing the farms which were their heritage to corporations who don't care about the land should be a small price to pay for saving The Homeland from woke trans furries. Pass those farmers another beer to wash down their Argentinian beef hamberders while they watch their sportsball.
paleotn
(22,252 posts)Simpletons like Shitler and his cast of equal morons just can’t grasp that.
multigraincracker
(37,674 posts)Just waiting for a little breeze or a fat turd to move just one card and see it all fall apart.
If we are lucky, we might see it come back together, or we might not.
Hey let’s start a new political party and call it The House Of Cards Party. The THCP.
Playingmantis
(645 posts)They deserve some recognition
Fil1957
(708 posts)his tariffs caused them hardship in his first term and then he says in '24 he's GOING TO DO IT AGAIN!
It's as if I shoot you with a gun, the gun is taken away from me, and I ask you to give it back to me so I can shoot you again. You decide to give it back to me thinking I won't ACTUALLY shoot you even though I SAY I WILL. I get the gun back and I shoot you again just like I did last time and said I would do this time. And you're SHOCKED AND HURT that I shot you!
Part of me feels bad for these Trump voting farmers. The other part of me wonders how stupid do you have to be that you cannot or do not understand simple logic.
Sometimes I think there's no hope for humanity.
Wicked Blue
(8,901 posts)to fertilize whatever needs fertilizing.
niyad
(132,564 posts)niyad
(132,564 posts)of them to, maybe, just maybe, start rethinking their destructive farming practices? Idle thought, I know.
NNadir
(38,093 posts)The abandonment of "organic farming" allowed the First World War to go on as long as it did.
In the first case, cotton is a crop that rapidly depletes soil of fixed nitrogen. In 1860 Lincoln was decidedly not an abolitionist. He merely claimed the right to limit slavery to where it existed. Chemical understanding was nearly nonexistent in the 19th century, and while people understood the value of things like manure, they certainly did not understand why manure worked nor did they have enough to around. Therefore, the survival of the cotton industry needed to expand to new lands to survive, and with it, human slavery.
As chemical understanding came to be developed by the early 20th century and people understood that fixed nitrogen, salt peter, was in fact fixed nitrogen, mines provided the initial means of preventing soil depletion, most in modern day Chile.
Salt peter, potassium nitrate, is also a component of gunpowder. One couldn't have a long war without it. This is why a British blockade of Germany was a serious threat to the German war industry.
In the early 20th century, the German chemist Fritz Haber (who was Jewish), working with the chemical engineer, Karl Bosch, developed the first industrial scalable process for nitrogen fixation, the Haber Bosch process, which allowed Germany to make both fertilizer and gunpowder. The Haber Bosch process which relies for now on dangerous fossil fuels, originally and still in some places, coal, to make hydrogen, is behind the ability to feed seven or eight billion people on this planet. Without the process more than half the world's population would be consigned to starvation.
This is a fact.
A more serious issue is connected with phosphorus which is still obtained by mining. It is an sword of Damocles hanging over the future of humanity, seldom discussed but very real.
The Haber Bosch process played a huge role in the US raprochment between "red" China and the United States. The Chinese communist government hated the US as much as we hated them. However, the Chinese knew that they would have great difficulty avoiding more famine without American Haber Bosch technology and so they agreed to meet with Nixon. This is a subtext that is not widely known.
This issue, the importance of nitrogen fixation and its roles in world history is covered in Vaclav Smil's book Enriching the Earth which is now more than two decades old is still very much worth a read.
One of the first catalysts that Haber found to be workable, was interestingly, uranium, but he didn't pursue it because he thought it too rare. (We now understand it is common.) Modern Haber Bosch catalysts are either based on iron or molybdenum. The latter metal is utilized in natural biological nitrogen fixation as a metalloprotein, which, while it works, works too slowly to support the world food supply via crop rotation.
I hope this answers your question.
twodogsbarking
(18,830 posts)flashman13
(2,413 posts)Shortage of fertilizer = shortage of chicken feed. Shortage of chicken feed = shortage of chickens. ( BTW Shortage of bird flu tracking could result in a massive shortage of chickens.) Shortage of chickens = shortage of eggs. Shortage of eggs = higher egg prices.
See how this all works. But the price of eggs.
mdbl
(8,671 posts)This administration is determined to starve us, if they don't finish poisoning us first.
nitpicked
(1,854 posts)Last week, somehow even though I thought (on the third try) I had asked for the (somewhat more expensive) house-brand apple juice, on the day IT was "out of stock".
QueerDuck
(1,740 posts)Justice matters.
(9,806 posts)
RockRaven
(19,430 posts)to warn people -- farmers especially -- away from voting for Trump.
Like, say, 2017-2020....
Torchlight
(6,835 posts)except for trump and his trolls themselves, who will minimize, trivialize and deflect blame with bumper sticker precision and AI-ready responses. It worked well enough to dupe the willing into believing windmills cause cancer, so I'm guessing they'll blame sustainable farm practices for their magnificent idiocy.
Hassler
(4,925 posts)For you Farmer Chet. Maybe your lord and savior will send you a Whitman Sampler for Christmas instead.
SergeStorms
(20,600 posts)coming from the mouths of tRump and his minions. If we could only find a way to get it to the farmers. 🤔
Eureka! Fox Snooze and Snooze Max! A delivery system that reaches every corner of the nation and completely saturates the "heartland!"
Problem solved. 😁