South Dakota Farmer Explains FTC's New Fertilizer Industry Investigation

Añadido: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]You are not in South Dakota today. So, where are you? Tell us a little bit about this event.

[00:00:04]>> I am not in South Dakota. And oddly enough, it's actually cooler here in Texas where I'm at outside of Dallas, Texas than it is back in South Dakota.

[00:00:10]Um, didn't expect that uh today. So, yeah, came down here to Dallas, Texas to uh to hear uh comments and some pretty uh um exciting news from the FTC commissioner looking into the fertilizer, you know, essentially the fertilizer cartel.

[00:00:25]>> Yeah, there's a lot of frustrations right now. And so the FTC says it is investigating possible anti-competitive behavior. Tren, how significant is it that the FTC has moved from just complaints and conversations to a formal investigation now?

[00:00:38]>> Yeah, we're highly encouraged. I mean, this is something we've looked forward to for a long time. We've heard a lot of talk out of this administration, which has been nice. They've really looked into this and and given this uh issue of fertilizer and other anti-competitive uh issues in agriculture a lot of look. Um so, we're just excited now we finally have some action. We have an investigation announced today that we can look into and and just see if there's antitrust behavior happening uh that they can finally do something about it.

[00:01:02]>> Yeah, you hinted at this, but talk a little bit about what this means and what you hope comes from this investigation. Trent, >> yeah, I I really hope this means that fertilizer uh the fertilizer manufacturers since there are so few of them, which means there's just not a lot of competition. I hope this um you know is is kind of a shot across the bow to tell them that we don't like the way they operate, the way they treat us as their customers. Um that that their their increased profits again and again and again are on our backs and our backs when our our income is not in the in the green, it's in the it's in the red. Um so we hope to see their um maybe their uh practices change a little bit on how they react to um things around the world, how they react to cost of production and and what they charge us for fertilizer and if there is antitrust behavior happening that something gets done um done about it and actually enforced in a court of law.

[00:01:52]>> Do you feel like the federal government has waited too long to investigate the fertil fertilizer industry or do you think the time is now? Um, you know, just like anything, uh, we we'd love it to happen 5 years ago before this issue became really, uh, challenging. You know, that's it's been since 2021 that my fertilizer and every one of our fertilizer across the nation has been, uh, has been really challenging. So, you know, we wish it would have happened earlier, but we're we're really glad it's happening now. Um, because especially with the issue like the the straight over moose closing in the Iran situation, all that did was just shine a big light on on how this issue has been such a such a troubling thing for us and it really exacerbated the problem. Um and so hopefully that pushes us over the edge to get us to where we are today.

[00:02:31]>> Yeah. You testified in front of the Senate about fertilizer costs since 2021 since that's the year that you mentioned since 2021. Can you quantify how much fertilizer costs have increased your operation?

[00:02:43]>> Um yeah. So, um, based on and not I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but we're looking at, you know, $200 to $300 a ton for, uh, URA in 2020, jumped up to, you know, almost over $900 a ton in 2022 as the price of corn went up, you know, and that we we paid really high prices then, but the price of our corn that we sold was high. Um, and, you know, came back down a little bit in in subsequent years, but now we're back today, you know, $7 $800 for that same price of ura um, right now. So, you look at those shifts and the price of corn has not gone up. Um, so there's there's no correlation between the two like there was in 2022. Um, and it's just leaving us with very few answers and very little control in the situation and no true competitors to help balance that that scale.

[00:03:22]>> Yeah. Speaking of that, what would a fair fertilizer market look like from your perspective?

[00:03:28]>> Yeah. So, I mean, a couple things I think we can do right here in the near term. Let's look at phosphate where it's concentrated even further than nitrogen.

[00:03:35]You know, right now there's a there's a counterveailing duty on competition on importing phosphorus. Phosphorus is not something it's very finite in this in this nation. We have to import it from around the world where there's where there's more phosphate reserves and there's a roadblock right now to to imports and that's directly injects competition into our market. If we take that barrier down of that that counterveailing duty because when that counterveailing duty went on back in 2021 my phosphorous fertilizer which I I depend on highly for my soil has gone up and has not come down to a to a sustainable level. So that'd be number one that I think they can do um right away. Um then the other one from a nitrogen perspective, we have cheap natural gas here. We can make nitrogen here. We just need to reduce the uh amount of uh regulation or roadblocks to put new plants in. We need to expedite the permit process to get new plants up to entice um to entice other people to get into this market and entice more competition.

[00:04:24]>> The counterveailing duties, is there any indication that the Trump administration will take action? We heard the president say that he can take some executive action. We haven't seen that yet. I know that you made that message clear in front of the Senate as well. Any indication we will see movement on that front?

[00:04:39]>> Um, you know, nothing more than than what everyone else is seeing, unfortunately. I mean, there's again, we're encouraged. They are they're shining light on this. They're um you know, we hear Secretary Rollins multiple times um coming out and talking about things like um the issue we're dealing with with fertilizer. So, we're really encouraged, but as of right now, um we don't we don't know what uh what the roadmap is to uh to a potential solution. Trent, I mean, you're hopeful.

[00:05:01]You're hopeful that we will see some type of resolution to this that really you say has been a pain point now for for going on more than five years.

[00:05:09]>> Yep. And and that's, you know, what we're hoping to kind of be here down today that um you know, the the backdrop had the had the phrase fed up and that's ex exactly what we are. We're fed up years and years. You know, we can we can understand maybe one year or two year of a price hike because of you know, cost production or a supply um constraint or something like that, but this is multiple years that it just doesn't make sense. You know, I I held off buying a lot of fertilizer this year because at the time it just did not make economic sense to buy at those levels and saying the math isn't working out. Eventually, it's going to come down and it just doesn't. They use issues issues like the the straight of Hormuz closing to just um jump up fertilizer that's already here in this country and it's not going to leave this country and didn't come through the straight of Hormuz. Um it uh you know, they use that excuse to jump up the price and just so little control.

[00:05:51]So, um I'm just I'm we're fed up, but we're encouraged that, you know, now we're finally making some light on this and hopefully uh you know, maybe maybe I hate to use the word uh threaten, but but to put some pressure on these fertilizer companies saying, "Hey, we're paying attention now and and we're reaching out and and the federal government right now is the only one that can help um with this process. We we obviously don't want, you know, a federal government dictating our price or anything like that, but the federal government does have a role to play here to make sure that our markets are free and fair. Um, I think that was one comment that the the commissioner made today that, you know, the the market that we're dealing with right now. It kind of emulates what we used to be like before we formed this country 250 years ago where we were under king control and and now we're under, you know, the king control of of these monopolies of our fertilizer um companies and and we're just we're fed up and and we're tired of it and and hopefully this is an indication to them that uh we need to play more fair.

[00:06:43]>> Okay, real quick background. It wasn't just South Dakota corn wasn't just Texas corn. what other corn groups were involved today all meeting on a Texas farm to bring this issue to light.

[00:06:53]>> Yeah. And that's the that's the really neat thing and and the eye opening thing is is it wasn't just corn growers. You know, there's 18 states represented here today. There was rice farmers, there was cotton farmers, soybean farmers, corn farmers, wheat farmers. All of all of this affects us equally. You know, even, you know, my farm, I grow more than just corn. Um all my feed crops for my cattle require fertilizer in order to to make a profitable crop and a and a productive crop. Um, so there's multiple agencies here today. Obviously, you know, folks at Texas Corn have done a ton of work on this. Um, that's why it's kind of nice to be in their home state to have it as a backdrop for this this announcement today. Um but uh but there's this this issue is is widespread and and we wanted to make that known.