16 / SEEDWORLD.COM JUNE 2026 billion-dollar projects. It takes years to permit, financing is dif ficult and natural gas price visibility is not always there.” While nitrogen gets the most attention, Keyman points to an even more immediate risk hiding in plain sight. “The war is causing bigger havoc on the phosphate side,” he says. “Sulfur is the biggest problem, causing production outages globally. Phosphate reserves are concentrated in only a few places, so when something goes wrong, the consequences are much faster and more severe.” Those consequences do not stay contained within fertilizer markets. They cascade. “If China is not exporting phosphates over the summer, you can expect major yield losses in Brazil,” Keyman says. “That results in higher soybean prices and risks for global supply. This thing happens very quickly.” The Cost of Waiting If supply fragility is one side of the equation, purchasing behavior is the other. And according to Keyman, it is making a difficult situation worse. “They are all doing a major mistake for waiting this long,” he says. “You have to have your supplies locked up, at least part of it, particularly in a fragile supply chain. Imagine 38% of urea comes out of the Arabian Gulf. Why would you risk such a big supply and wait until the last moment?” The financial consequences are already visible. “Last spring, the U.S. farmer paid about $200 per ton more than Brazil because of last-minute buying,” Keyman says. “This year, again, they waited too long. Urea in New Orleans was $390 in January and now it’s trading at $730. We thought there was a lesson, but history tells me we have short memories.” That pattern — delayed purchasing followed by price spikes — is not just a logistical issue. It is now colliding with a deeper economic problem on the farm. Margins Under Pressure Pivot Bio CEO Chris Abbott sees the crisis through a different lens: farmer profitability. And from that vantage point, the situation is reaching unprecedented levels of strain. “In a six-year period, you’ve had three shocks to the supply chain — COVID, Russia/Ukraine and now Iran,” Abbott says. “But unlike prior disruptions, we have not seen grain prices rise to offset this. The ratio of nitrogen price to grain price is as bad as it’s ever been. I mean literally, in history, it is as bad as it’s ever been.” That imbalance is forcing difficult decisions across the farm. “The largest input for farmers is crop nutrition,” Abbott says. “When that entire complex spikes, it’s painful. And now you have that happening at a time when margins are already compressed. That’s where the real friction shows up.” Pivot Bio CCO Chris Turner says the financial pressure is showing up in ways the indus try cannot ignore. “We’re in a time right now where our customers financially on farm, it’s unrivaled in the last 25 to 30 years,” he says. “Every input is up year over year, and that compounds the situation. Farmers are facing significant headwinds in the grains market at the same time.” Even If the War Ends Tomorrow One of the most persistent misconceptions, Abbott says, is that the crisis will ease quickly once geopolitical ten sions subside. The reality is more complicated. “If this war ended tomor row, you are not going to have urea go from $850 a ton back to $350 overnight,” Abbott says. “That’s just not going to happen. Markets don’t reset that fast, and behavior doesn’t either.” Instead, the system risks repeating itself. “What happens is the supply-demand balance in the spring becomes out of whack again,” he says. “Farmers and retailers are hesitant to buy early because of the emotional and financial toll. That pushes more demand into spring again, and you get higher prices again. It becomes a cycle.” The result is a longer-term squeeze. “This probably gets worse before it gets better,” Abbott says. “What we’re seeing now at the tail end of this season could extend into the entire next crop year. That means 100% of fertilizer volume is exposed to this price dynamic, not just a portion.” Melih Keyman, Keytrade AG CEO Chris Abbott, Pivot Bio CEO Chris Turner, Pivot Bio CCO
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