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For Texas farmers, production costs are spiraling along with crop prices
David McLemore, Dallas Morning News
Farmland values are increasing in the double digits. Prices for commodities such as corn and cotton are up an average of 41 percent over last year, driven by global demand. And farm household income is averaging more than $89,000 annually.
But for Lloyd Arthur, who grows cotton in Crosby County northeast of Lubbock, there’s just not much cause for celebration.
Mr. Arthur has seen his diesel, fertilizer and herbicide costs skyrocket right along with commodity prices in the last year.
… Like their city cousins, Texas farmers are feeling the pinch in higher costs for gasoline and diesel fuel brought on by rising oil prices. And higher costs for fertilizer, herbicides, farm equipment and irrigation are also taking a toll. The volatility of the commodities market has kept many farmers like Mr. Arthur from locking in higher cotton prices in the futures market.
(27 May 2008)
Lofty Prices for Fertilizer Put Farmers in a Squeeze
Lauren Etter, Wall Street Journal
At a time when food prices are soaring world-wide, so is the price of fertilizer, producing huge profits for leading fertilizer makers and stirring anger among farmers in the U.S. and India.
Fertilizer prices are rising faster than those of almost any other raw material used by farmers. In April, farmers paid 65% more for fertilizer than they did a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That compares with price increases of 43% for fuel, 30% for seeds and 3.8% for chemicals such as weedkillers and insecticides over the same period, according to Agriculture Department indexes.
Those skyrocketing costs are making it harder for farmers to expand their harvests in response to the global food crisis that has sparked rioting, rationing and export controls in many countries.
(27 May 2008)
Energy giants smell windfall from sulphur
Carl Mortished, UK TImes
An ugly waste product of oil refining has been transformed into a golden windfall for energy companies as demand for fertilisers drives the price of sulphur to unprecedented levels.
For decades oil refiners have struggled to shift stockpiles of the yellow chemical, which is used to make sulphuric acid, essential in the manufacture of fertilisers. Food shortages and higher grain prices are boosting demand for fertilisers, and in only a year the price of sulphur has risen more than tenfold from $50 a tonne to $500 a tonne, according to ICIS, the chemicals-pricing service.
(27 May 2008)
