Facing skyrocketing fertilizer, pesticide, and fuel costs
/by Zack Metcalfe
Every crop – in fact all plants on Earth – require the same 14 nutrients to grow, ranging from macronutrients such as phosphorous, potassium, sulphur, and calcium to micronutrients such as molybdenum, manganese, nickel, and zinc. How much is needed depends on the nutrient, the crop, and the soil, but whether it’s a Sierra redwood or a stalk of wheat, all 14 are needed.
Of these nutrients, nitrogen is king, a key ingredient in the development of plant chlorophyll and protein. Nitrogen is also fickle. Unlike minerals and metals such as potassium and zinc, nitrogen can’t be mined. Nitrogen, the dominant gas in our atmosphere, can only be used by plants if it’s “fixed” by bacteria in the soil, converted from its gaseous state into something useable such as ammonia. The good news is that nitrogen-fixing bacteria are everywhere. The bad news is that bacteria can only do so much “fixing” in any given field.
For this reason, the history of agriculture is really the history of nitrogen. For thousands of years, we’ve been trying to concentrate as much fixed nitrogen into our soils as possible. We’ve spread decaying or digested plant matter in the form of leaf litter and manure so that it will decompose and surrender its nitrogen. We’ve cover-cropped and intercropped with legumes, which have a symbiotic relationship with soil bacteria, exchanging their sugars for still more nitrogen. We even celebrate lightning storms, not just for their deliveries of fresh water, but for the capacity of lightning to fix atmospheric nitrogen, splitting and rearranging airborne atoms into nitrates that fall with the rain.
Until the 20th century, we were at the mercy of natural nitrogen.
That changed in 1908, when German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch figured out how to synthesize massive quantities of ammonia in factory settings. The so-called Haber-Bosch process is still used today, and involves pressurizing nitrogen and hydrogen under extreme heat, which is provided by burning natural gas.
Throughout the 20th century, natural gas was cheap. Therefore, so too was ammonia, which we either spray directly onto fields in liquid form or convert into “nitrogen salts,” such as ammonium sulfate and ammonium phosphate, which are spread on fields and dissolved by rain. For more than a century, we’ve synthesized more ammonia than nature could possibly produce, surpassing the hard limits of growth. Wealthy nations live in the age of synthetic fertilizer.
PERFECT STORM
Dr. Manish Raizada, a professor with the University of Guelph’s plant agriculture department, said fertilizers, in particular synthetic ammonia, contribute enormously to the availability of food in the developed world.
Canadian fields, which make heavy use of these inputs, consistently produce two to three times more food than fields of the same size in sub-Saharan Africa, which use virtually none. There are other factors at play between these two extremes, but all else being equal, Raizada estimates modern fertilizer roughly doubles yields in Canadian fields. We’ve become so dependent on cheap fertilizer to feed ourselves that when prices increase, everyone feels the pinch.
Raizada said that when fertilizer prices climbed between 2007 and 2009, 150 million people globally fell into chronic malnutrition, and even growers in comparatively wealthy nations such as Canada saw the added expense dig into already narrow profit margins. Canadian corn growers, for instance, earn roughly one cent of profit for each cob of corn they grow, and it doesn’t take much for expensive fertilizers to eat into that one cent.
This year, farmers are again plagued by excessively high fertilizer costs, threatening lives and livelihoods. The COVID-19 pandemic, alongside several natural disasters, have disrupted the production and supply of several fertilizers and pesticides globally, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in international sanctions on, among other things, natural gas, a key ingredient in the Haber-Bosch process. The price of nitrogen fertilizer has swelled as a result, creating so much market uncertainty that other fertilizers have followed suit. If the market was valuing fertilizers appropriately, said Raizada, only nitrogen would have climbed as much as it has.
“I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a perfect storm like this,” he added.
DOUBLE TROUBLE
All fertilizer blends are increasing in price, said Wayne Simmons, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture and owner of Hammond Farm Feed & Supplies in Little Rapids in western Newfoundland. Exactly where those price increases will stop is impossible for him to say, because international sanctions against Russia are still taking shape, and fertilizer manufacturers have remained noncommittal.
“Having said that, it appears fertilizer blends will almost double,” said Simmons.
Vegetable producers in Newfoundland and Labrador will probably be hit hardest, he said, but no one will be exempt. Alternative fertilizers, such as manure, aren’t widely available in the province, added Simmons, so options are limited.
“If people have manure, that’s like sitting on gold right now,” said Caitlin Congdon, field crops specialist with Perennia, a Nova Scotia development agency supporting agriculture in all its forms.
Growers in Nova Scotia are a diverse group, she said, producing livestock, corn, wheat, barley, forages, soybeans, vegetables, and berries.
Each grower will face their own unique challenges when fertilizing their crop, said Congdon. But speaking generally, Perennia has recommended soil testing so that fertilizers can be applied more strategically, and buying alternative fertilizers such as manure when possible.
The good news, she said, is that market prices for several Nova Scotia commodities are quite high, which will help growers cover some of their increased fertilizer costs.
“Our producers are, for better or worse, used to dealing with price fluctuations,” said Congdon. “They’ve got strategies in their toolboxes already.”
PERENNIAL PLUS
The Maritime provinces, along with Quebec and Maine, produce something like 99 percent of all cultivated wild blueberries in the world, and for growers of this extremely regional crop, fertilizer may not be the problem this year.
Peter Rideout, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Producers Association of Nova Scotia, said that because their crop is perennial and most of their plants are already established, their fertilizer needs are less than most. In a standard year, he said, fertilizer might cost a wild blueberry grower $60-$100 per acre.
“Any increase in price certainly affects our margins but it’s maybe not as big as some annual crops,” he said.
Pesticides are another story. Every grower has their preferred brand, said Rideout, and while prices have been increasing, availability may be of greater concern. He said several pesticides are at risk of selling out, and growers who don’t plan ahead may not get what they want.
“A lot of growers have been pretty proactive, getting their orders in early, getting the products spoken for,” said Rideout. “I think that’s pretty prudent.”
He said another concern is diesel, the price of which has roughly doubled since last year. Many wild blueberry fields are in remote and scattered locations, and reaching them with heavy equipment will be expensive. Fortunately, said Rideout, the price for wild blueberries is healthy enough to support many growers through 2022.
BAD TO WORSE
Greg Donald, general manager of the P.E.I. Potato Board, said his growers were on bad footing even before the climb in fertilizer prices. From last November until late March, the province’s potato sector operated under extensive export restrictions as a consequence of potato wart, a regulated fungal pathogen discovered in several fields last fall. Some $120-million worth of potatoes were prevented from leaving P.E.I. during those months, many of which were destroyed before they could find a market.
Now, said Donald, fertilizer costs have increased roughly 90 percent for potato growers, raising the overall price of production by as much as 25 percent. And P.E.I. is short on alternatives. He said what little manure exists on the Island is already spoken for, and most growers already test their soil so as to fertilize strategically.
“We just destroyed a crop and now we’re planning maybe the most expensive crop ever,” said Donald. “The risks are very high.”
Cedric MacLeod is a New Brunswick beef farmer who feeds 40 cow-calf pairs using rented fields totalling 300 acres. Many of these fields were in rough shape when they came under his management, so he’s been boosting their background fertility with phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, and nitrogen. Once sufficiently recovered, he transitions the fields from grass to legumes such as alfalfa and clover.
Since legumes generate their own nitrogen, by way of symbiotic relationships with bacteria in the soil, transitioned fields no longer need inputs of synthetic ammonia. With fertilizers jumping in price, MacLeod has decided to transition all his fields early.
“We’re making a pretty strategic move this year away from nitrogen fertilizers altogether,” he said. “It’s a great product – easy to use, stable, and the return on investment is easy to pencil. But there’s always a trade-off. And at this point, that trade-off just doesn’t pencil.”
CUTTING BACK
In the near term, to protect the livelihoods of Canadian growers and the food security of Canadian consumers, Raizada said the federal government should be prepared to subsidize nitrogen fertilizer, but that in the long term, growers themselves must reduce their dependence on synthetic nitrogen outright.
Not only are nitrogen fertilizers extremely carbon intensive to produce, but once they’re added to soil, whatever isn’t absorbed by crops either contaminates groundwater or “volatilizes” into nitrous oxide, an extremely potent greenhouse gas. In the case of corn, as much as 50 percent of added nitrogen is wasted in this fashion.
Raizada said much of this can be avoided with “ecological” growing practices, such as cover-cropping and intercropping with legumes for an added boost of natural nitrogen. Growers could also incorporate more legumes, such as soybeans, in extended crop rotations of three to four years, a practice that would help break disease cycles and reduce the need for pesticides.
When synthetic fertilizers are applied, Raizada recommends growers test their soils so as to use them strategically and to consider “splitting” fertilizer doses. Typically, Canadian growers add all their fertilizer at the beginning of the growing season, but this can overwhelm young crops with root systems too small to take up all available nutrients. Adding half of one’s fertilizer at the start of the season and then adding the rest halfway through can boost absorption and reduce waste.
BIOFERTILIZERS
A game changer in this debate may be biofertilizers, which Raizada’s lab is working on. Biofertilizers are an effort to empower all crops with the same symbiotic bacterial relationship used by legumes to generate natural nitrogen. Already, several species of soil bacteria have been recruited from natural settings and selectively bred to pair with specific crops in fields. The company Pivot Bio, for example, has already marketed a first generation of symbiotic bacteria for corn. On fields in the midwestern United States, these bacteria have allowed corn to generate 25 percent of its nitrogen.
Additional generations of bacteria paired with this and other crops are presently bred in labs across the continent, said Raizada. Since these bacteria live inside or on the surface of crop roots, the nitrogen they fix is immediately and consistently available to the plant without risk of leaching or volatilizing. Biofertilizers are new enough that they’re only available in specific markets, but Raizada expects them to be available to Canadian growers, for many crops, in the next three years, either as soil treatments or coated on seeds.
Biofertilizers would, in theory, only need to be applied to soils once, then remain available for subsequent seasons, but there does appear to be some benefit to applying them several times, strengthening their standing in the bacterial community. Raizada said these biofertilizers will be affordable and have the potential to displace enormous quantities of synthetic fertilizers.
“It’s not pie in the sky anymore,” he said. “It’s realistic.”
