Cabinet and congressional members recently gathered at USDA headquarters to provide updates on efforts to expand domestic fertilizer production, short term and long term. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins starts with:
“The Blue Point project in Louisiana. Within 45 days, we should see permitting wrapped up on this project to build a $3.7 billion ammonia plant, which, when opened, will become the world’s largest ammonia plant.”
Then there is the resumption of USDA’s Fertilizer Production Expansion Program, expediting projects previously stalled by regulations.
“I think that this is a really important long-term step, but we’re taking these steps immediately to get to the goal of reshoring all fertilizer to our country.”
Examples of projects under FPEP include:
“[We] will be assisting the higher-impact awardees with project completion. For example, an $80 million investment in Washington state under this program that stalled was projected to produce 700,000 tons annually of hydrogen ammonia fertilizer that will support more than 200 jobs. We expect construction to begin this year.”
And as for small-scale fertilizer projects within FPEP:
“The small ones are important too, as we talk about deconsolidating and deregulating, and having smaller alongside larger. A $3.9 million project in Iowa will host a ribbon-cutting this summer, specifically to work to expand domestic organic fertilizer production capacity through large-scale composting and nutrient processing.”
A future action now under congressional consideration: a USDA input economist that would lead a team in department efforts in fertilizer market transparency. Then there is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, speeding up permitting of infrastructure projects necessary for increased domestic fertilizer production. As Defense Department Assistant Secretary Adam Telle explains:
“we’ve used the energy executive order to permit more than 1,000 energy-related facilities. We are taking that same effort and applying it now to fertilizer,”
including Louisiana’s Blue Point Complex.
“This facility happens to be located on the Mississippi River, and there’s a reason for that, and that’s because the inland waterway system that we build and maintain enables the inputs for farmers all across America in the heartland to go into the system and then to have their products flow throughout the country into the world, and so we’re going to continue to pace at that through building infrastructure.”