Several of the world’s largest fertilizer producers were hit with a class-action lawsuit last week (March 9, 2026), accusing the companies of conspiring to inflate fertilizer prices for U.S. farmers. They say the conspiracy added thousands of dollars in input costs per farm and raised major concerns across the agricultural supply chain.
Union Line Farms of Hopkinton, Iowa, filed the suit and targets many of the companies currently dominating the global fertilizer market. The suit names companies like Mosaic, Nutrien, Koch Agronomic Services, and others, alleging they coordinated production and pricing strategies to artificially increase the cost of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash, key inputs for crop production across U.S. agriculture. When prices began rising sharply during supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions in 2020, the suit alleges that prices remained elevated long after those pressures had ceased. The suit said fertilizer costs increased by 60 percent between 2021 and 2022, adding an estimated $128,000 in additional costs per farm in 2022 alone.
Additionally…..
Sixty-four agricultural groups cited the impact of the Middle East conflict in a letter sent to two of the nation’s largest fertilizer producers, urging them to support the removal of duties on imported phosphate products from Morocco.
“The recent Middle East conflict has led to increases in the prices of U.S. fertilizer, regardless of actual impact to the U.S. supply,” read the letter, which was sent to The Mosaic Company and J.R. Simplot. “We strongly urge efforts to lower and stabilize prices by renouncing support of phosphate duties incurred through antidumping and countervailing duty investigations.”
In 2020, the Commerce Department, acting on a petition by Mosaic, imposed duties on phosphate fertilizers imported from Morocco and Russia. At the time, Mosaic claimed that unfairly subsidized foreign companies were flooding the U.S. market with fertilizers and selling them at extremely low prices. The petition was supported by J.R. Simplot.
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