Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Missouri Corn Talk, your go to weekly agriculture podcast delivering fast, reliable updates on market development efforts, ethanol demand, and the issues shaping today's corn industry. I'm your host, David Geiger. Missouri Corn Growers association grower leaders recently joined farmers and agricultural organizations from 18 states to call for stronger oversight and accountability in today's consolidated fertilizer industry.
During the town hall event in McKinney, Texas, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson announced a formal investigation into potentially anti competitive fertilizer practices after sharing his experiences with FTC leaders this week on Missouri Corn Doc. We're joined by MCGA board member Bryce Fisher of Rockville to share insight from the event and the work growers have done to fight for transparency and fairness in the fertilizer markets. Bryce, thank you for taking the time to join us. And I think it's fair to say farmers are fed up and they want to talk to the administration about it. What is the situation and tell me about your experience there.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Morning, David. Thanks for having us on and thanks for taking the time to interview us. Yeah, it's been a rough few years trying to secure and purchase fertilize for our farm and many others around the country are feeling the effects to fertilize companies have return $20 billion to their shareholders. Why? Farmers are struggling to make ends meet. Farmers are going broke. More bankruptcies have doubled in this period of time since they've had record profit returns to their shareholders over the last five years.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: We have these major farm organizations, 18 states, coming together to talk about this fertilizer issue, specifically with the Federal Trade Commission and the Trump administration.
What was their initial response when you were speaking with the FTC commissioner?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Their initial response was this is going to be a long road, getting people to step forward, getting people on the inside to step forward and say there is price gouging, there is monopoly actions being used.
It was interesting being in the room down in Texas, listening to everybody's stories from North Dakota to Alabama, Georgia, and everybody had great insight on avenues for the FTC and the Trump administration to look into. They said this will be a long road to get progress done.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Bryce, I immediately think of Morocco, a huge producer of fertilizer, specifically phosphate, and the US Placed tariffs on it. What avenues are you watching to help deal with fertilizer prices?
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah, David, that's one avenue that we can look into the Morocco dealings of. Several years ago. There was also another plant on the east side of Iowa that the state of Iowa has put a lot of tax dollars into trying to get a Farmer owned, state owned, fertilized plant and some of the larger fertilized companies choked that plant out and was able to buy that plant for pennies on the dollar. And so, you know, there's another avenue. I think there's lots of areas that we can look into and get to the bottom of this. But people's got to be willing to come forward and share their story. And that's, that's our biggest push is if you know something, you got to stand up and fight. It's, it's tough to sit here and know that we are struggling, farmers are struggling and some people are making records setting profits off of our struggles. So.
And it also boils down to they're making more expensive food to be sold in the United States by these efforts. And so, you know, they're not only hurting the farmers, they're also hurting the people of the end products at the grocery stores.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Bryce here's the thing that immediately comes to my mind when I think of this topic. We have antitrust laws. Why can't we just take those and use those now or at least use the thought of using them to talk to these groups?
[00:04:07] Speaker B: You know, I'm, I'm not a lawyer and can't even pretend to be a lawyer. That, that's kind of my main thought going into this is, you know, with the FTC in our corner, they have a budget of around $400 million a year and that's to cover all their, their cases not just as fertilized. And it was kind of alluded to down at the meeting that ftc may spend 20 million dol effort and these fertilize companies are going to spend a billion dollars to fight it? And I'm like, why, if there's nothing to hide, does the fertilize companies have to spend a billion dollars to get their story across or, or be legitimate? And in my mind it ought to be more like a audit on your taxes. They ought to just say, hey, we're going to come in, we want to audit your books and see if there's any collusion or any fraudulent activities here.
And it's not an open door transparency anymore. And it's sad in this country that it has to be done through the court of laws and not sit down and say we're not colluding, there's nothing going on here. This is what it is. This is coming from overseas, this is coming from this, that and whatever to get fertilized into this country. And if they were open and transparent, you know, I Think the farmers could live with that. But if they're going to spend a billion dollars and hide behind a bunch of lawyers, I think it's, it's something that definitely needs to be addressed.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: You already touched on this. Fertilizer companies have returned more than $20 billion to shareholders over the last five years.
Meanwhile, Farm income is falling. Farmers have seen around two price spikes over the last four years in fertilizer, urea.
That's an example of something that's doubled in the last six years.
What is the real world impact? This has been really difficult for farmers. What are you seeing from yourself, your own area, and just the folks that you're talking to about how that is impacting your day to day operations?
[00:06:10] Speaker B: David so personally on our farm, our fertility program, being a high school ag teacher for four years, I kind of explain it to people this way so they can understand is it's similar to a grade point average. So we can store a little bit into our soil every year on potassium and phosphate. And so we can kind of play that. Like this year I didn't put on what I probably should have, knowing that I had reserves in the bank that I could still grow a successful crop. But we can't do that for every year, you know, and so we're going to have to put that back and hopefully we kind of play the game when it goes down that we can rebuild our reserves up or do extra credit and get our grade point average back up. As far as nitrogen goes, that's a year to year deal. There's no reserve of nitrogen in the soil. Once it rains a lot, it's gone. This year in particular has been tough because we have had 25 to 27 inches of rain on our farm field since the first of the year, with 24 of that being since we've planted corn. And so I have an excellent looking corn crop in my future and I need to be top dress in my corn, which we anticipated, but not this much. And so now I'm going to have to buy more nitrogen at a higher price than ever before to try to top dress my corn so I could have a successful year. And so it's instances like this that farmers can adapt a little bit on potassium and phosphates, but as far as nitrogen, that's a, that's an every year deal. And that is very critical to the food supply in the United States to be secure.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Bryce Last question is just how do folks keep track of this? How do they get involved? How do they make sure their voices are being heard? As the FTC continues this investigation, please
[00:08:03] Speaker B: reach out to Missouri Corn. Please reach out to Missouri Soybean. If you know anything and want to get involved, reach out to your state corn organizations and let them know you have information.
Watch for flyers. Watch the newspapers. We're going to be putting articles in the newspaper if we don't stand up. Now, the FTC said that we probably can't stand up for another 25 to 30 years because nobody will want to touch it. So now's the time. This is very important, and we need to, we need to be heard as farmers and as a nation so we can have our safe, secure food grown here in the United States and not brought in foreignly.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Again. Bryce Fisher with the Missouri Corn Growers association, thank you so much for your time.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Thank you, David.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Missouri Corn continues to advocate for increased competition, improved market transparency, and policies that strengthen domestic fertilizer production while protecting farmers from unfair pricing practices. And that's all we have for this week's Missouri Corn Doc. This podcast is made possible by the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council and and the Missouri Corn Growers Association. To learn more about the work being done on behalf of Missouri corn farmers, visit mocorn.org I'm David Geiger. Thanks for listening.
