The United States is a net importer of urea. CHS Executive Vice President Rick Dusek believes that supply is at risk due to the war in the Middle East. “Typically, these next couple of weeks are when the last vessels load over in that part of the region and come over,” said Dusek. “There’s been vessels canceled, there have been plants shut down in that part of the world, and it’s raising fertilizer prices, so there’s going to be a bit of a scramble here to get kind of that last ten or 20 percent in the country ready for spring.” Speaking at a CHS meeting in Grand Forks, Dusek said it is hard to know how long this conflict will last or how big of an impact it will have because it’s so new and it’s volatile. The issue is compounded by the reduction in the amount of fertilizer applied last fall. “For us, we’re two-thirds or maybe 70 percent of normal; some of that was due to uncertainty and some of that was due to weather.”
