Chemical costs are down, but for how long?

SASKATOON — As the agricultural landscape braces for uncertainty, securing supplies now could be a smart move for the season ahead.

According to the Canadian Ag Chem Price Transparency Report from the Farmers Business Network (FBN), prices are the lowest they’ve been in years. With market pressures mounting and a potential tariff war with the United States looming, FBN’s general manager of Canada, Breen Neeser, is urging farmers to take advantage of current pricing before the spring rush.

“Pricing has come down to historical lows and has been for the better part of the year,” he said.

“Growers should probably take advantage of them; prices are probably unlikely to stay there.”

Because of the dynamics of the Canada-U.S. marketplace, it’s difficult to predict exactly how a tariff war might affect pricing, but the fallout would almost certainly result in price increases. But even if tariffs don’t materialize, Neeser expects prices to rise.

“The base raw material costs that make up the cost of a crop protection product are increasing,” he said.

“So product manufacturers have two choices. They can either eat that decrease, or they can turn around and say, ‘I’m not doing this anymore,’ and they’ll make it less available.”

FBN is a membership-based farm chemical and agricultural input supplier based in the U.S. FBN Canada was launched in 2017 and now has more than 9,000 members in Canada. The group began publishing its Canadian Ag Chem Price Transparency Report in 2018.