Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said a large swath of the country’s farmers will be unaffected this planting season, despite the rising fertilizer costs stemming from the Iran war.
“The good news is that about 80% of our farmers, actually, last fall locked in their fertilizer,” Rollins said to reporters outside the White House on Monday. “So as we’re moving into planting season, it’s only about 20% to 25% of our farmers that didn’t lock that in. We are working directly to ensure that we can get them what they need and it won’t bankrupt them.”
As the war moves into its second month, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz has led not only to higher oil prices but also higher fertilizer prices, as Persian Gulf-based companies face difficulty exporting their supplies through the closed-off strait.