War in Iran Is Creating a Fertilizer Crisis Like Never Before

Odd Lots

We all know that the war with Iran has sent oil prices spiking. But it’s also pushing up the cost of all sorts of chemicals, including fertilizers like urea, ammonia and other nitrogen products that are essential for food production. This is all happening at the worst possible time — just before the spring planting season, when fertilizer is most needed. And while farmers have seen higher spot prices for things like urea before, notably back in 2022, there are already signs that this crisis might be worse. So how is fertilizer actually made? And what do higher fertilizer costs mean for farmers and for food prices? On this episode we speak with Alexis Maxwell, senior analyst on Bloomberg Intelligence's agriculture team.

Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter
Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More description

We all know that the war with Iran has sent oil prices spiking. But it’s also pushing up the cost of all sorts of chemicals, including fertilizers like urea, ammonia and other nitrogen products that are essential for food production. This is all happening at the worst possible time — just before the spring planting season, when fertilizer is most needed. And while farmers have seen higher spot prices for things like urea before, notably back in 2022, there are already signs that this crisis might be worse. So how is fertilizer actually made? And what do higher fertilizer costs mean for farmers and for food prices? On this episode we speak with Alexis Maxwell, senior analyst on Bloomberg Intelligence's agriculture team.

Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter
Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2026-03-11 30 min Transcript
Listen elsewhere

Available Results

Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Transcript

Open the Transcript tab to load the transcript.

Chapters

No chapters available.