CHICAGO (Reuters) - Troy Walker's phone will not stop ringing at his Kansas farm cooperative, with growers needing fertilizer for their wheat fields in the coming months.
In Kentucky, corn and soybean farmer Caleb Ragland said shelves at his local farm supplier are often bare of weed killer glyphosate and other crop chemicals. He expects the situation could get worse.
Bayer's glyphosate manufacturing plant in Louisiana remains shut after Hurricane Ida slammed the Gulf Coast in late August, further complicating logistical and supply chain problems that had already tightened global supplies of fertilizers and chemicals.
"Ida was like a heavyweight boxer going 15 rounds, and threw a hard upper-cut at the farmer," said Ragland, a ninth generation corn and soybean farmer in Magnolia, Kentucky. "Things were already bad. Ida made it worse."
Ida disrupted grain and soybean shipments from the Gulf Coast, which accounts for about 60% of U.S. exports, at a time global crop supplies are tight and demand from China is strong.
Now, the storm's ripple effects are hampering production and movement of some fertilizers and crop chemicals ahead of U.S. harvest. This is straining an agricultural and food supply chain already battered by trade and logistics delays during the pandemic.
Rising input costs threaten the incomes of farmers who had banked on booming profits this year, as crop prices soared to the highest in nearly a decade, after years of stagnating around break-even levels....
Read Full Story: https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2021-09-22/us-farmers-face-supply-shortages-higher-costs-after-hurricane-ida
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