Part 1: From Natural Gas to the Elevator
A three-part series by Caroline Hegstrom | April 28, 2026
I'm a farmer in Northern Minnesota and while this commodity market doesn't directly affect my farm, it does deeply affect our Minnesota farm families and fellow farmers throughout the U.S. What I'm seeing in the fertilizer pricing system isn't helping American farmers stay in the business of feeding our country. So I went to the source data, and what I found is a more complicated and more revealing picture than what the headlines are giving us.
What started as a question about whether the fertilizer shortage is real turned into a story about pricing, about farm economics, and about how the headlines we're reading connect to, and sometimes diverge from, what's happening on the ground. There is much to read through here, so settle in. I wanted to give this the answer it deserved, and that meant tracing the story from the ground up.
Start with the fuel.
The nitrogen fertilizer that goes on American corn fields is manufactured from natural gas, and the U.S. has a lot of it. U.S. natural gas at Henry Hub has actually fallen since the war began, dropping to $2.63/MMBtu as of April 16, a fraction of what European manufacturers are paying. That's the foundation of American nitrogen production, and far from being disrupted by the conflict, the domestic feedstock advantage has grown stronger.
This is the first fact that gets lost in the headlines: the raw material for nitrogen fertilizer is not petroleum, it's not imported from Iran, and it's not scarce. It's domestic natural gas, and the U.S. produces roughly 90% of its own nitrogen fertilizer supply using it.
Now follow it to the water.
To understand fertilizer pricing in the U.S., you have to start in New Orleans. The Port of New Orleans (referred to in the industry as NOLA) is where the majority of fertilizer enters and moves through the domestic market. It's the central hub where imported product arrives by vessel and domestic product moves by barge up the Mississippi River system into the heart of the Corn Belt. Because of that, NOLA is the benchmark for U.S. urea pricing, the same way Chicago is the benchmark for corn. When the industry talks about what fertilizer "costs," this is the price they're referencing. It's the wholesale number, before any local dealer or retailer adds their margin.
Here's what that market has actually done since mid-February:
$450/ton — Mid-February, pre-conflict baseline
$470–$495/ton — February 28, day of attack; immediate but modest reaction
$520–$550/ton — March 3, first trading day; Strait of Hormuz concerns hit the market
$645/ton — Mid-March, continued escalation as Middle East supply suspended
$670–$690s/ton — March 18–19, damage to Iran/Qatar energy facilities reported
$690–$700s/ton — Late March, market stabilizing at elevated levels
$734/ton (briefly) — Early April, India announced 2.5 million tonne import tender
$650–$675, then $700/ton — April 9, ceasefire announcement dropped prices; market recovered within hours
$692/ton — Mid-to-late April, stable post-ceasefire extension; prices never retreated
[NOLA Urea Barge Price Chart: Mid-February through Late April 2026]
That last entry is worth pausing on. When the ceasefire was first announced on April 9, NOLA prices fell $60–$80 in less than a day. When the ceasefire appeared uncertain, they climbed right back. On April 21, the ceasefire was extended with no fixed end date. Retail prices didn't drop. In the first full week after the extension, retail urea, anhydrous, and UAN all continued to climb.
The product at NOLA has been physically present throughout this entire period. No new shipments arrived from the Middle East during the ceasefire, the Strait remains contested. When prices dropped, traders repriced barges that were already sitting in New Orleans. When the ceasefire looked uncertain, they repriced the same barges again. This is domestically produced nitrogen, made from domestic natural gas, being sold to domestic farmers, and its price is being set by a conflict happening on the other side of the world over a shipping lane it never traveled through. What has moved over the past eight weeks is not the supply. It's the price tag on stationary inventory.
Over eight weeks, the wholesale price has risen roughly 55%. That's significant, no one should minimize it. But the supply is available at NOLA. StoneX's Josh Linville, one of the most widely cited fertilizer analysts in the country, has pointed out that NOLA urea has been trading at a discount to global replacement values for the entire fertilizer year since July 2025. Not a single week at a premium to the world price.
Now follow it to the elevator.
This is where the story changes. The national average retail price for urea, what a farmer is actually quoted when they call their local co-op, hit $858/ton in the second week of April. That's 49% higher than the same week last year. Anhydrous ammonia crossed $1,114/ton. Both numbers are still climbing.
Before the conflict, the spread between the NOLA wholesale price and the retail price was roughly $50–$75/ton. By mid-April, with NOLA trading around $692 and retail averaging $858, that gap sits at roughly $166. The wholesale price went up 55%. The retail price went up 49% from an already higher starting point. That widening spread, the difference between what the wholesale market says and what the farmer is actually charged, is where the questions about pricing begin.
It's also exactly why the Fertilizer Transparency and Competition Act matters. More on that in Part 3.
What this means.
The U.S. is not waiting on a ship from the Middle East to grow a Midwest corn crop. We manufacture the vast majority of our nitrogen domestically, using cheap, abundant natural gas. The Strait of Hormuz matters to the global market, and global prices do influence ours, but the physical supply in the United States has not disappeared. The crisis, for most American farmers, is a pricing event driven by global speculation and limited domestic price transparency, not a shortage of product.
In Part 2, we'll look at who in American agriculture actually feels this, and why the 15–20% of farm families who are most exposed got there not by failing to plan, but by running out of room to.
Sources referenced in this article:
- CME Group/StoneX (2025–2026): Linville on NOLA barge pricing and global replacement values
- CRU Group / Argus Media (Feb–Apr 2026): NOLA urea barge transaction data
- Profercy Nitrogen Service (April 9, 2026): Nitrogen Index, India tender impact, ceasefire price response
- DTN Retail Fertilizer Trends (April 22, 2026): National average retail urea and anhydrous prices
- farmdoc daily, University of Illinois (April 26, 2026): Ceasefire price impact analysis
- EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (April 2026): Henry Hub natural gas price forecasts
This is Part 1 of a three-part series. Part 2: Who Gets Hurt and Why. Part 3: Follow the Food Dollar.
Caroline Hegstrom is the founder of Taiga Farm & Seed and The Boreal Farm, a certified organic farm in Northern Minnesota.
