Fertilizer prices to go up by 60%

Japan's largest wholesaler of fertilizers says it will raise its prices by an average of 60 percent in July, as a result of a global surge in prices of fertilizer ingredients. NHK reports that Japan's National Federation of Agricultural
Cooperative Associations, or Zenno, announced its record-high price increases at a news conference on Friday (Actually it was top news last night at NHK's 21:00 Newshour - the second news was about North Korea's nuclear program).

Prices of nitrogen-based fertilizers will rise up to 63 percent and phosphorus fertilizers will rise up to 74 percent. Prices of compound fertilizers made of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium will rise from between 45 and 112 percent. Zenno says the cost of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium has doubled or tripled from last year.

The surge in prices is attributed to a growth in crop production as the global population expands. China, the world's largest producer of phosphorus, accelerated the trend by restricting its phosphorus exports to secure domestic needs.

Japan imports almost all ingredients for fertilizers, making it vulnerable to global price fluctuations.


NHK World: Fertilizer prices to go up

What NHK failed to note was that many other countries also import fertilizer ingredients and feed ingredients from China. This means that if domestic food prices go up, Japan will also have a harder time to import cheap food from other countries. As Tony Boys noted 8 years ago (I quoted him here and here) and many others since then have pointed out, we could be facing a sudden food crisis not unlike what happened to North Korea in the 1990s.