NFU Asks For Fertilizer Price Investigation

The National Farmers Union (NFU) wants to know what's behind the rise in fertilizer prices.

"Fertilizer prices have skyrocketed over the past 6 months, and we want to know why", said Don Ciparis, President of National Farmers Union - Ontario. "My farm’s fertilizer prices have gone up 144-220% since April 7 to December 13 of last year. All of this is just outrageous. We believe that the only way to get to the bottom of these price increases is for an independent body like the House of Commons Agriculture Committee to investigate all of the factors that contribute to fertilizer pricing in Canada".

On January 13th, Katie Ward, National President of the NFU, wrote to the Chair of the Agriculture Committee asking for an investigation.

“Sure, we’ve all heard about supply chain problems, and COVID-problems, and relatively small increases in the cost of natural gas. But when farmers experience these problems our net income goes down, not up,” said Dean Harder, NFU Manitoba member. “When the fertilizer companies encounter the same problems, their income seems set to double. There is something wrong with this picture, and it may boil down to plain old profiteering.”

Doug Scott, NFU Board member from Alberta also weighed in.

“The NFU has previously shown how fertilizer companies can manipulate their costs and charges to increase their profits at the expense of farmers. The only consistent difference between 2020 to 2021 is that the price of grain went up. It seems obvious that lack of competition in the fertilizer business allows companies to raise prices to match or overtake commodity prices, regardless of their internal cost structures,” he said. “Fertilizer companies are making windfall profits, while farmers are facing massively increased costs after many did not grow much of a crop in 2021 because of the drought. This unfairness has to change.”