Higher fertilizer prices are structural rather than cyclical, and growers should plan for an extended period of elevated input costs, according to a CoBank Knowledge Exchange report summarized by Fertilizer Daily on September 5.
The analysis focuses on phosphate markets and warns that global phosphate production capacity is forecast to drop 13 percent from pre-crisis levels.
Damaged infrastructure, prolonged outages, and raw material shortages cannot be resolved quickly enough to restore pre-conflict supply chains within a single crop year.
The report identifies three reinforcing factors behind the structural price shift, starting with the sulfur supply crisis triggered by Strait of Hormuz disruption.
Russia's ban on sulfur exports compounds the shortage, leaving phosphate producers in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia competing for a sharply reduced pool of available sulfur.
Capacity additions expected to offset the losses, primarily in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, face timeline risks and will not fully compensate before 2028 at the earliest in CoBank's read.
For U.S. farmers, phosphate application cutbacks already underway this fall could extend into 2027 and beyond, with precision nutrient management and soil testing as partial offsets.
CoBank cautioned that no substitute can fully replace conventional phosphate fertilizer at commercial scale, so acreage and yield risk rises when sulfur rationing binds.
The Fertilizer Institute framed sulfur as the next phosphate bottleneck in open August coverage, with more than half of globally traded sulfur normally transiting Hormuz and commercial shipments described as near-zero since the Iran conflict.
Mosaic settled third-quarter molten sulfur at 705 dollars per long ton, the last public Tampa contract figure, while Gulf solid exports in open news remained above 1,100 dollars per tonne.
Alberta forming plants and the Vancouver stem are the Pacific answer to the same shortage. Canada showed up in trade press as a swing supplier on a 5.22 million tonne annualized 2026 pace.
Structural phosphate capacity loss means sulfur demand destruction is slower on the supply side than on the farm gate, which supports continued export nominations from British Columbia terminals.
Desk read: CoBank converts the sulfur spike from a freight shock into a multi-year phosphate constraint. Pacific loadings answer supply-side rationing even when U.S. application rates fall.