{"id":185296,"date":"2026-04-04T08:07:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/185296\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T08:07:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T08:07:29","slug":"trump-struck-iran-now-farmers-are-paying-the-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/185296\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Struck Iran. Now Farmers Are Paying the Price."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">\u201cWhen I saw the new fertilizer price, I\u2019m like, holy crap. Talk about a kick to the gut.\u201d Spring is here, which means it\u2019s planting season in Iowa. For corn farmers preparing to sow their fields, the war with Iran couldn\u2019t have come at a worse time. \u201cSo this is the fertilizer. So how much did the price of it go up after the war in Iran erupted?\u201d \u201cIt went up about $250 a ton in my neck of the woods.\u201d Iran\u2019s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit point for a third of the world\u2019s fertilizer, sent the price soaring. The cost of two widely used nitrogen fertilizers shot up by 20 and 50 percent in the first few weeks of the war. A decade of inflation, low commodity prices and tariffs have squeezed Jolene Riessen\u2019s profit margins. She\u2019s now facing her toughest year yet as a farmer. \u201cEvery year is a risk when you farm. But this has kind of been compounding. Our prices have been low. And yet our input costs continue to ratchet up.\u201d With the price of fertilizer already higher than last year, she put off buying until last month, hoping the price would go down. Then the war started and the opposite happened. With the window to plant closing, she had little choice but to buy at a high price. \u201cFor the amount of fertilizer I was going to buy, it had gone up about $13,000 in two days. What pot does that come out of? Fertilizer price, we can\u2019t control. Fuel price, we can\u2019t control. Where is it all going to end up? We don\u2019t know.\u201d \u201cThis is like the worst I\u2019ve ever seen it. Gambling what our futures are going to look like.\u201d Farmer Lance Lillibridge has been representing Iowa corn growers for 14 years. \u201cThe current conflict in Iran is hurting farmers everywhere in Iowa and across the country. If we\u2019re not able to sustain our land with the nutrients that\u2019s needed to grow a crop, then our yields are going to go down. Eventually going to drive up the price of corn, which is what we use to feed chickens, pigs and cattle, amongst other things. And eventually that is going to go back to the consumer at the grocery store.\u201d While it may take some time for shoppers to see the price increase reflected in their groceries, Jolene\u2019s costs continue to climb higher than what she makes for her corn. \u201cThis is the corn that we\u2019ve been talking about.\u201d \u201cYep.\u201d At today\u2019s price of corn, she could lose roughly $110 per acre across her 530 acres. \u201cWe just did the math. And so maybe looking at losing $58,000. So what am I going to do to negate that? I have never lost quite that much before.\u201d Still, she has hoped the price of corn will go up this year to offset at least some of that loss. She keeps a close eye on its every move in the market. \u201cTime to check the markets.\u201d \u201cHow many times a day are you checking the prices?\u201d \u201cSometimes you \u2014 Half-dozen times a day. And sometimes that isn\u2019t enough. Now you know that at closing at 2 o\u2019clock, they were, they were up 4 cents and now they\u2019re down 2 cents. Which means that was a 6-cent move in the market. Crazy.\u201d \u201cAnd today, I\u2019m promising to request additional farm relief for our great patriots in the next funding bill.\u201d Last month, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on fertilizer sales from Belarus and Venezuela to try to ease the price surge and promised more aid to farmers. Still, Jolene is making hard calculations to stay on the farm that has been in her family for 85 years. \u201cThose income sources could very well be selling some equipment. There\u2019s a chance that there could be some ground sold. And then what are you left with? For some farmers, it\u2019s a legacy. That\u2019s my legacy that I\u2019m selling. If it was up to me, the war would be done yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen I saw the new fertilizer price, I\u2019m like, holy crap. Talk about a kick to the gut.\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8254,74531,3365,74529,5351,14670,74530,9,11,10,5253],"class_list":{"0":"post-185296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-commodity","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-fertilizer","12":"tag-iowa","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-maize","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-news","18":"tag-vis-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}