Stine Decker and her two-year-old son Wylie enjoyed a spring morning on their farm, about an hour south of Joplin.
“We're about five miles from the house,” Joplin said.
They strolled along the banks of the Marias River, which lolls along the boundary of their property. It’s a brief respite from their morning farm chores.
“There’s sage brush, the water’s running next to us,” Decker pointed out.
“Water, water!" her son Wylie exclaimed.
Decker and her father grow a variety of crops, but their primary one is wheat. It’s a nutrient-intensive crop, which means commercial farmers must add fertilizers to help them grow.
Urea is the most common nitrogen-based fertilizer used in the state. Since the war in Iran began, its price has nearly doubled across the country.
“Just for a viewpoint, this spring I was coming out at around $700 a ton, and within a week it was up to, I think, $930 a ton now,” Decker said.
That’s leaving farmers like Decker questioning what to do next.
“We've had to cut back though,” Decker explained.
A recent report found 70 percent of farmers across the nation are struggling to afford fertilizer. Montana producers are now evaluating how to adjust their operations so that they don’t need to use as much.
These high fertilizer prices are projected to last into 2027. That’s in addition to already-increased costs for machinery, labor and gas. Farmers received an emergency government “bridge” payment earlier this year to mitigate those costs. But Decker said, “fertilizer went up, you know, the week after we received our bridge payment. Which seems to happen very frequently, that money we get just gets sent off to fertilizer and chemical companies.”
Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently expressed concerns about fertilizer monopolies as well as a history of price gouging practices. Some solutions are being considered in Congress. Federal lawmakers drafted the Fertilizer Transparency Act, which would improve pricing accountability by doing things like creating a mandatory reporting system.
President Donald Trump’s most recent budget proposal calls for a $5 billion cut to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on top of those made last year. This leaves farmers like John Wicks – also an appointee to the state’s Agriculture Development Council – wondering how the agency could carry out those solutions.
“They're struggling to provide the service now and the people that are working really hard, but it's going to be another thing that they have to put on their plate,” Wicks said.
Wicks said farmers are adapting. Many are reducing their fertilizer application, trying new technology that applies it more stringently, or planting more nitrogen-rich crops like peas.
Montana State University Associate Agricultural Economics professor Andrew Swanson said farmers are used to market shifts.
But with something like the Iran war, “You couldn't have accounted for this when you're making your planting decisions back in the fall and in the winter. And so that really kind of limits farmers’ options to adapt,” he explained.
He added that consumers will see these costs reflected in stores. Though policies like the Fertilizer Transparency Act may help, Swanson said farmers will be navigating the market fallout from the war for at least a year.
Back in Joplin, Decker said all she can do is take it one step at a time. “Yeah just keeping our chins up and taking it day by day, get the seed in the ground and see where everything else leads from there,” Decker said.
As of April 22, the U.S. and Iran remain in a tentative ceasefire. A Fertilizer Transparency Act is currently being considered by both U.S. House and Senate agriculture committees.
