Is it time to build a new empire without fossil fuel?  Zero Carbon, Green Hydrogen and Green Ammonia is here.  

“The Biggest chance to improve the climate for humans comes from Agriculture and stopping the expansion of fossil fuels.”  

“No-tillage farming and total reset of commercial fertilizer, manufacture, use and application must be taken seriously“.

Do you want to learn how Oligarchs control our climate future and why it is time to break them up?

• It is now possible to kill off the Oligarchs with Green Play Ammonia™ in local supply of NH3 for your farm.
• It will be a matter of education.
• It will be a loss for folks that invest in these companies with nasty exploratory records.
• They are public and private companies that tie their existence to fossil fuel built from coal oil and gas.

Fertilizer Costs:
What is Driving the Increase and How Can Growers Manage It?
John Westra
Professor and Program Leader, Agricultural Economics
February 8, 2022, University of Nebraska.

USDA/Flickr (Public Domain)

Your leader and professor John Westra says, “Significant increases in the cost of fertilizer over the past year have caused a lot of concern and heartburn among farmers and ranchers in Nebraska. Given that fertilizer costs now account for approximately 15-20% of total cash costs for corn production in Nebraska, fertilizer prices and availability are a major concern for farmers planning for the 2022 growing season. Farmers in some areas are reporting prices more than 300% higher than last winter, and delivery times seems to be anyone’s guess. Veteran growers may recall a similar situation in 2007-2009 when prices for nitrogen, phosphate, and potash doubled, or more, from pre-2007 levels. That price increase was driven by strong demand (domestic and global), low fertilizer inventories, and very slow adjustments in production by the U.S. fertilizer industry. Those same factors, and more, are at play this time around; and the increased uncertainty may be cause for concern “.

 Guy J Swanson says in bold type in an advisory manner to help people understand why fertilizer is so expensive.

Number 1. So we have the first part of the story. 
An opening to explain to the UNL professor the reality of nutrient pricing.   

Your leader and professor John Westra says,                 “Because fertilizer is a global commodity, it can be influenced by various market factors beyond the control of U.S. producers. Nearly 45% of all fertilizer materials are exported to a different country from where they were produced. This means that fertilizer prices are more volatile than if produced and consumed in the same country, because they are affected by what is occurring where they are produced, the cost of production in that country, demand from other countries needing fertilizer products, and costs to transport fertilizers to their destination. Another confounding factor is that two-thirds of global fertilizer demand is driven primarily by six crops; and corn, wheat, and soybeans constitute about 36% of that total demand. So, as large producers of corn, soybeans, and wheat, the U.S. and Nebraska are large consumers of fertilize “.

Number 2 …..Now the Ag Economists are blaming some other country. They are blaming the high consumption of fertilizer in the US. So why are Nebraska Farmers such large consumers. Is it the human condition of more is more?  

• Is it because the nutrients are too cheap in relation to the commodity?
  • So is demand related to the price of fertilizer when the commodity price is high? Or is the price of Nitrogen adjusted to profits that producers make….the fertilizer rate did not change….
  • The on farm profit potential increased and up went the price because the Oligarch is worse than a Monopolists
• Oligarchs of Ammonia are vertically integrated right to the producer. They know what they can get away with the manipulation in a the sting operation, Commonly called “ the great robbery of farm wealth“.
  • The wolf pack designed Oligarchs work together in regions in the Shell Game to set prices based on profits of the farmer and not the demand for more nutrients.  

• Since the Country Side has 400 million plus acre across the continent nobody can figure out what is going on with the Ammonia price.
• Regionalized Oligarchs work together as a Wolf Pack watching what each brother or sister wolf is doing in a region.
• Transportation then locks down the competitive effect to zero.  
• More about the Shell Game to come.

Your leader and professor John Westra says,          “Now on the supply side of the equation, the U.S. is the third-largest producer of fertilizer globally. However, because it consumes or demands so much to produce corn, wheat, and soybeans, among other crops, the U.S. is a net importer of all three nutrients, especially nitrogen and potash. This means that U.S. fertilizer dealers and U.S. producers pay the global market price for fertilizers, plus transportation costs.

Number 3……Blaming the importer, The Blind side. It is always some other country’s problem of greater demand?  Blaming others….keep your eye on the shell game, watch the hand movements. The Blame is always put to others. Everybody complains…even the fertilizer dealer is unable to overcome the complaints coming from the land owners.

Your leader and professor John Westra says,       ”To produce fertilizer, facilities use globally priced raw materials and substantial amounts of energy to convert the raw chemical materials into forms farmers can use. For example, anhydrous ammonia is produced by the Haber-Bosch process in which nitrogen is combined with hydrogen to synthesize the ammonia, using natural gas as the source of the hydrogen, as well as the energy, for synthesizing. Natural gas is an essential element for most nitrogen fertilizers, and accounts for 70% to 90% of the production variable costs in the synthesis process. So, natural gas prices have an outsized impact on nitrogen fertilizer prices. Because, natural gas prices have risen dramatically over the past few months, especially in Europe, it has forced many EU nitrogen plants to close. Because plants built for this process typically require three to five years to build, the long-run impact is that when a demand surge occurs, the response time to fulfill supply via an additional production facility will lag about three to five years at a significant price tag”.

Number 4…..Blaming Somebody else works when you are an Oligarch……keep your eye on the ball in the shell….now the Ag Economist thinks the price is jacked way up because NG or Methane is way high priced.

• And now the blame game goes to Europe….since in Europe producers do not directly apply NH3 to land….they use 2^nd and 3^rd process Ureas and Nitrates loaded with Carbon.  How did the economist figure that out….he must have called Koch Bros or CF or the Fertilizer Institute in Washington DC.
• Keep your eye on the ball. When NG is $4. Ammonia is about $250 per ton to build. But there is a really big opportunity if the price of ammonia can be raised to within 10% of Solution 32-0-0 or Urea….the Shell Game is on.
• Since the CF, Koch or Nutrien of our wide world look for the opportunity to jack-up the ammonia price 8 times which brings up the 32-0-0, 28-0-0 and 46-0-0 within 10% of the 82-0-0 Ammonia price.
•  The material 32-0-0 or Salvage and convenience soil mobile nitrate nitrogen wins over primary, low cost and stable, 82-0-0 ammonium nitrogen. Now you lost sight of the ball. Nothing is relative.
• Now we are talking Trillions of Dollars into the Oligarchs pocket book.
• You have just discovered the Shell Game.

Number 5,…..Defending a dumb decision….So who teaches dumb decisions at UNL. This could be classic discussion about 5 years from now. You now have an evolving young group of corn farmers that do not know how much more crop effective Ammonia in deep bands of healthy soil ( 7 to 8 inches).  

No-tillage placed crystallized bands of NPKS at 1% CV in cover crop. The liquid state 300 psi ammonia with Polyphosphate and Thio-sulfate and Potassium Thiosulfate and Zinc.  TAPPKTS plus Zinc at 1% CV at 8 inch depths No-till…that is efficiency. 166% more crop available and environmentally the best bet a corn farmer can place….and well tested in Nebraska.
 

• You may not know it,  the Oligarchs get together (indirectly of course) with the marketing department to improve profits and promote the dumb decision to switch from Ammonia at 82-0-0 to UAN at 28-0-0 or URAN at 32-0-0.
• A really dumb decision aided and abetted by the Oligarchs….because all the high priced employees of Oligarchs want to build a high priced material and take away the Ammonia to be directly applied.
• The Oligarchs must have longer lead times to build 32-0-0 and fill up the product with carbon. The long pipeline of 28-0-0 nitrate based fertilizer appears to be very long in Europe.
• The Oligarchs must have more margin but the risk of 32-0-0 and 28-0-0 is much higher. So if the risk to build 32-0-0  is high why is the NH3 price March 17, 2022 $1,500 per ton in Nebraska.
• Along the Gulf coast and up into the Great Plains (by the Phase of the Moon, 100 men and women) at the 44 ammonia plants in the US worked in unison and by some mysterious manner raised the price of ammonia eight  times to protect the risk of 32-0-0 manufacture.
• This is mainly because the Oligarch must defend a dumb decision. Instead of 18 cent per pound of N as NH3 the Oligarchs want 90 cents per pound of N as NH3.

Number 6. The Oligarchs get away with the sting because they can….because they are not competitors at the very top.  Each Oligarch are part of the Wolf Pack. They are run by hedge fund managers and a room full of attorneys at ridiculous rates of return.

• The price manipulation hurts land values and young farmers that are caught going year to year are not able to buy land….young farmers cannot get ahead.
• Retiring farmers cannot sell out to a young farmer. For Sure across the US and Canada, Only directly applied ammonia drives land values at much high values when it is priced to the cost of production plus a small 10% margin.
• You can build ammonia locally in 2024. Green Ammonia….and you can get a seven year contract for $100 to $300 per ton. There is a new business plan that will work in Grand Island , Nebraska. www.greenplayammonia.com
• The Hedge Fund Manager and the Koch Brothers need to divest fast….fossil fuel Ammonia has come to an end….and Green Play Ammonia™ built locally at $100 to $300 per ton is coming from the bottom end up….not the top end down. A company owned by land owners and similar to Ethanol plants.
• Come in Calgary….are the lights still on? Your hedge fund manager is on the line.

Your leader and professor John Westra says,       ”Closer to home, last February, during that freeze throughout much of the U.S. heartland, including Texas, much of the natural gas production was interrupted or shifted away from industrial uses and pushed to heating homes. This caused U.S. ammonia plants in Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana, which combined account for about 60% of production, to shut down during this time and cut about 250,000 tons of production. Then Hurricane Ida hit the Gulf Coast and production stopped once again”.

Number 7. For sure, 250,000 tons sounds like a lot of ammonia….it is a drop in the bucket. It is less than 1.3% of the US ammonia produced.  In the US 16 million to 18 million tons is built every year at 44 fossil fuel plants of which 2 are coal fired and will have to close.

Your leader and professor John Westra says,    ”COVID-19, of course played a role in plant production disruptions, either for much-needed regular maintenance or issues that have occurred because of delayed maintenance. These disruptions caused a slight decrease in availability, despite the U.S. spending the past few years increasing its number of production plants. These disruptions are echoed throughout the supply chain, and across the global, as this is a global market. Compounding the supply situation was the real and forecasted conditions for commodities, and by extension fertilizers in 2019-2020. The pessimism before the pandemic began, combined with the uncertainty at the beginning of the pandemic, caused lower forecasts for fertilizers and firms responded by to cut back on production. The narrowing of fertilizer demand followed by a quick expansion, rather than a slow return, created another supply chain shock. The rapid rise in row crop prices led to quick reactions for higher fertilizer demand in the U.S. and abroad, further tightening supplies already strained due to production and distribution issues”.

Number 8.  We got to blame somebody….it might as well be Covid. The Great Covid excuse to mess with the food supply…..each plant that builds ammonia averages 75 employees at a 55 year old leaky ammonia plant spitting out methane.  

Your leader and professor John Westra says,      ”Increased transport costs, from higher fuel costs and trucking rates have caused prices for materials like fertilizers to increase as well. Increased volume of goods shipped at all stages have positively impacted prices too. Hurricanes, ice storms, labor issues, additional manufacturing capacity and infrastructure breakdowns, including rail logistics issues and increased freight rates, have caused even more production and distribution disruptions”.

Number 9,  Can we blame transportation that always works. Bad railroads, No trucks. No fuel. No drivers, …..since we shut down the rivers to move ammonia. Who owns the barges ?….Oh the big three ammonia producers own the NH3 barges….no private barge owners and no import allowed on the rivers.  The Oligarchs have not invested in Ammonia storage or improved pipeline infrastructure ( the Magellan Pipeline is a goner) since they sent  the Kansas farmer’s billions of dollars to Brazil to build plants in the free enterprise competitors back yard. Koch’s decision is not in the interest of Kansas land values or in the interest of the Great Plains economy.

Your leader and professor John Westra says,      ”Trades disputes and disruptions have played a big role in fertilizer availability and cost. The U.S. and EU have applied sanctions to Belarus — who contributes about 20% of global potash exports. This has slowed and even stopped shipments of potash to the EU and the U.S. and discouraged other countries from buying from Belarus — reducing global potash supply. At the end of September, China applied an export ban on phosphate due to rising costs of production and domestic use. Because China accounts for 25% of phosphate fertilizer exports globally, this export ban reduces global supply and puts upward pressure on prices. China may also restrict exports of urea, of which it contributes about 10% of global exports. And the uncertainty of Russian actions against Ukraine creates volatility in the markets for raw materials and finished goods in the fertilizer sector. Russia is a major exporter of natural gas to the EU and one of the top exporters globally of all three fertilizer nutrients — nitrogen, phosphate, and potash “.

Number 10, Lets Blame Russia, land of 110 oligarchs controlling 33% of the GDP….that will work. Our producers will believe that one…..The Blame Game, Defending a Bad Decision. You are only as good as the last play. It is time to rewrite the economic game plan at UNL. Break em up….that is the solution.

  John Westra says, “While this background material helps famers understand the factors driving fertilizer prices upward, it does not help them control these rising input costs. For this, growers need to focus on traditional approaches or tools to manage inputs and costs, so that they optimize their cropping enterprises from an economic perspective. Using a program like the Ag Budget Calculator (ABC) program, developed by University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty at the Center for Agricultural Profitability (CAP), producers can determine their per-unit costs and better manage these costs by manipulating input levels, if the know the impacts on production or anticipated output. By knowing their production costs, the ABC program helps growers determine their break-even costs on a per-unit basis. This helps growers know how much they must receive for a bushel of corn, for example, to cover their cash or economic costs. This information goes a long way toward growers knowing the price they can lock in or target through various marketing strategies and tools so that they make the most profitable choices available. For more information on the ABC program, and training opportunities for that program, go to: https://cap.unl.edu/abc. To download nitrogen calculators, visit the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's CropWatch site at http://cropwatch.unl.edu/soils “ 

Number 11, The problem is no master plan, No regulation and moral suasion of the Ag Economist at UNL from the TVA. You have the original example of shallow thinking in deep water.  

• This is Front Street in Dodge City…somebody is going to die. It will be the fossil Ammonia Koch Bros that die slowly off as fossil fuel demand drifts off in 2030 with Coal, Kerosene, and anything NG.

Green Play Ammonia takes up void as Zero Carbon Ammonia built locally.

• The Break-up of the Oligarchs is the business opportunity for the land owners and the ethanol and cement merchants of Nebraska….because the Oligarchs can drive producers away from directly applied Ammonia in a Shell Game. Keep your eye on the ball. The Oligarchs cannot switch to Green Ammonia because they are fossil fuelers with high debt load in a declining market.
• The market has no chance of being predictable with Koch Bros in the game. They want fear of supply marketing with Inland Stranded Ammonia.  The Wolf Pack Oligarch rises to that fear marketing level from the chaos of the fossil fuel industry. The same is true with CF and Nutrien. They are fossil fuelers.
• An industry full of Blame, Complaining and always Defending a bad decision in the oil field.
• Never seen anything like in my career where land owners let a few people….less than 100 people walk over their balance sheets and operating statements and potentially destroying land values by delaying success.  

Tags: 
Fertilizer
Cost of Production
Agricultural Budget Calculator

John Westra

Professor and Program Leader, Southeast Research, Extension and Education Center
Department of Agricultural Economics
Southeast Research and Extension Center
402-624-8022
john.westra@unl.edu

Can it be True? Monopolies are better for the producer than an Oligopoly.
Lessons from the Animal World.  

One more thing, Why is a Monopoly better for the producer than a Oligarchy? 

In the animal world a Lone Wolf, has a monopoly and the animal will monopolize his territory with hunting skill and strong physical health.

• The Apex Monopoly animal has a biological death warrant in the woodlands.
• The canine species will last a few years. Then the Lone Wolf dies off.  Now the hunted have a chance.
• The male Lone Wolf can also find a mate. The mate could be more powerful than the male as she may have better leadership as an Alpha female.
• A Lone Wolf is a monopolist hunter of sheep as an example. 
• The Monopoly feeder of mountain sheep and domestic livestock is a Lone Wolf.  

A Wolf Pack can take down a 2,200 pound Wood Bison in Alberta.

• The Wolf Pack, Mom, Dad, Kids, Uncles, Cousins, and Aunts work in unison as a team to wear down the healthy Wood Bison in heavy snow.
• Even a healthy Wood bison can be taken down by the Apex killers.
• The kill is never achieved by a Lone Wolf up against a strong 2,200 pound Wood Bison.

Come in Lincoln, Nebraska. You will discover the problem of capitalism run-a-muck.

• It is time to break them up.
• Keep your eyes on the ball.
• The Shell Game requires your immediate attention.

  KOCH NITROGEN COMPANY, LLC

This is how a loose pack of three Oligarchs work together like a Wolf Pack. The group of Oligarchs are not competing with each other in geographic marketing regions and this allows the price to be manipulated.  

• The price is never competitive. There are no seven year contracts. The grey Ammonia futures market is unlikely to be representative of the price of ammonia since there are so few plays.
• Effectively there is no futures market in fossil Grey Ammonia. The indication of Oligarchy and manipulated pricing is well understood. A high risk place to play with your money is Grey NH3.
• The Oligarch’s use transportation to hide the nitrogen supply. You cannot get Ammonia in time is deceptive cry. But yet it always seems to show up at an elevated price. Storage at the farm is key.
• The best way to play in the futures market for Ammonia is store ammonia on your farm and fill up in July for your farm.  Lack of Storage allows fear marketing by the Oligarch.
• Ammonia is the only fertilizer product you store for any length of time…Sometimes ammonia is stored and not used for three years in Kansas farm storage.
• Ammonia futures is a good play when the producer has storage. Green Play Ammonia is even better since it is Zero Carbon with tremendous impacts on the environment.

• Next time you buy Ammonia ask for a Green Play Ammonia™ Seven Year Contract at $100 to $300 per ton. Watch the game change. Watch the Oligarchs look for another market to manipulate.
   
• Make sure you ask for Zero Carbon Green Play Ammonia and get the advantage of Green Hydrogen Credits.

October 10, 2021  Green Play Ammonia™ as TAPPKTS plus Zinc is on the venue at West Point, Nebraska.
Corn Crop coming in 2022. Fumigant Grade Cover Crop, Pacific Gold Mustard is ready for fall banding of stabilized nutrients.

November 17, 2021, Banding into fumigant grade Pacific Gold Mustard with TATS and Zinc.
Stabilized Ammonia Nitrogen at a reasonable price.
Exactrix® Owners have Seven Year Contracts at $100 to $300 per ton as Green Zero Carbon Ammonia with a 2024 time line.
On farm storage is required.

A rotation within a rotation, a relay with fumigant grade Pacific Gold Mustard as rooting cover provides the ideal seed bed come May planting of 2022.