INDIANAPOLIS — Farmers in Indiana are feeling the effects of the conflict in the Middle East, with fertilizer prices skyrocketing just before the upcoming planting season.
Experts say disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for fertilizer and the materials used to produce it, are driving the price increases.
Blain Hizer is a farmer who works on his family farm in Kewanna, Indiana. He said many local farmers are finding it difficult to get a price on fertilizer since the strikes took place.
"If you go to your local co-op or wherever you get your fertilizer, a lot of them just took their bids off the table; you couldn't even get a price," Hizer said.
He also said corn is the crop being impacted the most, since it requires the most nitrogen, the biggest key to growing a good corn crop.
"It takes a whole lot of nitrogen on the corn side, so farmers right now are trying to consider whether they stick with corn or do they switch to beans, plant more beans, and go that route where they don't have to put the nitrogen on," Hizer said.
While farmers are being heavily impacted by rising fertilizer costs, local gardening stores say they have not seen much of an increase.
"We work kind of a season ahead, so everything was booked last fall, so we wouldn't really think about now. If it lingered on, then we would start hearing about it in the summer," said Pat Sullivan, the owner of Sullivan Hardware and Garden.
Hizer says farm stores operate differently from gardening supply stores, which is why they are more exposed to the price increases.
"Farmers switch up their acres, uh, year to year, um, so you're never really sure on exactly how many acres they're going to plant to one crop or the other and so while they will book in a lot of their fertilizer needs, um, they won't have all of it," Hizer said.
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