The Outlook for Fall Fertility: Uncertainties and Unknowns Rule the Day
September 11, 2025 Based upon evidence, the fall fertilizer application this year could be a very hard road to navigate for ag retailers and their grower-customers. Hints of the scenario expected to play out were provided earlier in 2025 by RaboResearch in its early-year fertilizer report.
“Fertilizer prices are showing an upward trend for 2025 and eroding farmers’ purchasing power, as commodity prices are not increasing in tandem,” wrote Bruno Fonseca, Senior Analyst — Farm Inputs at RaboResearch, in the report. “We expect this unfavorable scenario for the fertilizer market to persist throughout the year.”
Ag retailers that spoke with CropLife® believe this assessment of the fertilizer market for fall is spot on.
“Today my outlook on fertilizer application is very subdued for this coming fall,” says George Secor, President/CEO at Sunrise Cooperative, Fremont, OH. “There is absolutely no revenue at all at the farmgate. I understand growers have to feed a crop to get it to grow. However, at this point, they are not going to have any dollars to do anything with.”
Rory Olerud, CEO at Agri Partners, Clear Lake, SD, agrees, also pointing to commodity/fertilizer prices as culprits. “[The outlook for fall is] negative as the grain markets have crashed and the fertilizer prices are going up,” says Olerud. “The margin at the grower level is not great.”
Taken together, these factors will likely suppress the fall application season, says Chris DeMoss, MFA, Director of Plant Foods, at MFA, Columbia, MO. “We think fall applications may be below typical rates due to the current value of fertilizer and farmgate economics,” he says.
The Outlook for Macronutrients
For macronutrients, the fall outlook is equally reserved. “Considering the various factors at play, the fertilizer market is likely to face yet another challenging year in 2025,” wrote RaboResearch’s Fonseca in the company’s report. “This is particularly the case for nitrogen and phosphate-based fertilizers.”
According to ag retailers, two of the three macronutrients — nitrogen-based fertilizers and potash — should do better this fall season. “Anhydrous ammonia (NH3) will most likely be in the normal usage range as it is currently the most competitive nitrogen,” says MFA’s DeMoss.
For potash, the outlook is similar. “Potash likely to do the best in fall,” says Kreg Ruhl, Vice President, Crop Nutrients at GROWMARK, Bloomington, IL. “[There is] ample supply and fair pricing should encourage application rates.”
For phosphates, however, the outlook is less clear. According to the RaboResearch report, phosphates remain constrained due to changes in the global dynamics of the main players and restrictions on exports from China.
“There is huge pressure on phosphates,” Sunrise’s Secor says. “They are way out of line and something will [have to] change. The problem is we have a commodity such as phosphates so high it makes no sense relative to the corn price.”
Remembering 2008
Going into the fall season, GROWMARK’s Ruhl believes ag retailers will be very cautious when purchasing/storing fertilizers in their warehouses, with memories of the 2008 oversupply/price crash still present in many minds. “I would expect a renewed focus on contracting with growers to secure price/availability rather than just ordering at the counter,” he says.
Tim Wimmer, Executive Vice President at Marion Ag Service, St. Paul, OR, concurs. “[There will be a] reluctance to purchase and store this fall due to high fertilizer costs,” he says.
Sunrise’s Secor also believes the ghosts of 2008 will continue to haunt today’s ag retailers.
“Most retailers survived another year of just-in-time inventory controls working,” he says. “It sure feels to me like we are going to continue see hand-to-mouth buying. In 2008, when many folks got shelled in the fertilizer game, it was not fun, and many really good people ended up losing their jobs due to how the market acted. We are going to see a very conservative approach to inventory taken at this time.”
Of course, one of the other big unknowns for all of agriculture is tariffs. According to the RaboResearch report, this is “the main issue.”
“Tariffs disrupt and damage long-standing trade relationships,” warned Fonseca in the report. “In the case of the U.S., market share will shift to its competitors (for example, Brazil) and will be difficult to regain. Expectations are that tariffs and ongoing trade conflicts will weigh on agricultural commodity prices, which have already been depressed for the past two years. We have long cautioned that U.S. growers will suffer the most from the newly imposed tariffs. Ultimately, the economics of supply and demand and the price of marginal tons will prove relevant. Over the last year or more, policy changes have led to scarcity, resulting in higher prices for U.S. fertilizers compared to global markets, and this trend may continue in the future.”
James Klein, Sales Agronomist at Farm Service Co-op, Harlan, IA, agrees that overseas issues could negatively impact fall fertilizer application. “I would keep an eye on the situation in the Middle East,” says Klein. “The urea supply to the U.S. could be affected by this.”
GROWMARK’s Ruhl also views tariffs as a negative for the fall fertilizer application market. “The unknown business climate/tariff structure is discouraging needed imports to the domestic market,” he says. “[And] Russian tariffs would be a huge wildcard. They have skirted the conversation thus far, but Russian supply is significant to meeting U.S. demand.”
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