Anhydrous Ammonia Prices Up 8%

The price of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer has been climbing steadily since last fall, according to Brownfield reports. USDA Ag Market News in Illinois put the average price at $887 in early January.

Purdue University farm business management specialist Alan Miller says it’s simply a matter of supply and demand, with corn acres expected to increase worldwide.

“We continue to see this strong demand for nitrogen fertilizers, both here in the U.S. and worldwide, as a result of that situation that we have for crops where the crops are relatively high-priced,” Miller said. “At the same time, there have been supply disruptions over the past several months.

“We had, all year long, cutbacks in production in the Caribbean, which is a major source of our N,” he says. “Not only that, but we had some difficulty moving product into the Midwest — a lot of it’s coming in imports and coming up through the Mississippi River.”

But while anhydrous prices are about 8% higher than a year ago, the prices for most of the other major fertilizers are steady to lower. Potash is down about 9% compared to last year.