The FarmDoc team at the University of Illinois has posted a new article about consolidation trends in the U.S. fertilizer industry. Henrique Monaco led that team. The research finds that the United States accounts for about 10 to 15 percent of total global fertilizer consumption. Monaco breaks that out by N, P, and K fertilizer imports into the United States.
“For potassium specifically, the import reliance is very high, and Canada is the main partner. When it comes to phosphate and nitrogen, those numbers are much lower at 13 percent and 6 percent. That means that the U.S. has the capacity, and let’s bring it back to nitrogen here. It has a good domestic production capacity in terms of ammonia production, which is used for other nitrogen products as well.”
Put another way, the U.S. produces 87 percent of the phosphate it needs annually and 94 percent of the nitrogen.