Ag groups pleased with fertilizer tariff decision

Jul 20, 2022

The International Trade Commission voted not to place tariffs on some UAN for fertilizer

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Organizations representing U.S. farmers are pleased with a recent decision that helps keep money in farmers’ pockets.

On July 18, the International Trade Commission (ITC) voted unanimously against placing anti-dumping tariffs on urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) solutions from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Had the ITC voted the other way, U.S. farmers would’ve had to pay additional costs for fertilizer originating in those countries.

Farmers are already paying more for inputs and more price increases would challenge them further.

“Skyrocketing supply costs are already forcing some farmers into the red. The cost of fertilizer increased more than 60% from 2021 to 2022 and that’s not sustainable,” Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a statement. “We appreciate the commission’s recognition that adding unnecessary import costs would have made it difficult for farmers to access an affordable supply of this crucial nutrient at a time when America’s farmers are being called on to meet growing demand here at home and abroad.”

“This comes as a welcome relief,” National Corn Growers Association President Chris Edgington said in a statement. “We have been sounding the alarms and telling the ITC commissioners that tariffs will drive up input prices to even more unaffordable levels for farmers and cripple our supply. I am so glad they listened.”

The ITC’s ruling isn’t viewed as a unanimous victory for all those in the ag sector.

In June 2021, CF Industries filed a petition with the ITC requesting it place tariffs on UAN from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago “due to the harm the domestic UAN industry has experienced from dumped and unfairly subsidized UAN important from Russia and Trinidad.”

CF Industries wanted the tariffs to help restore fairness in the fertilizer industry and ensure American farmers have a reliable source of fertilizers.

In June 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce found UAN imports from Russia are sold at less than fair value at rates ranging from 8.16 percent to 122.93 percent.

And UAN imports from Trinidad were dumped at a rate of 111.71 percent.

The ITC’s decision will hurt the U.S. fertilizer sector, said Tony Will, president and CEO of CF Industries.

“Unfortunately, this outcome will perpetuate an unlevel playing field for a domestic industry that has invested billions of dollars in the U.S. to ensure American farmers have a reliable source of UAN fertilizer,” he said in a statement.

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids