800 326 9054Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden on Wednesday accused Nutrien and Mosaic of working to “collude” to limit U.S. fertilizer supply and control prices, suggesting that the administration could take future action to inject more competition into markets, if necessary.
“This administration is going to do everything it can to ensure that farmers have the fertilizer [they] need, at a price that they can pay,” Vaden said during a webinar hosted by the National Agricultural Law Center. “We’re not going to allow these two companies to do anything to undermine this.”
The administration has made overtures to tackle high farm input costs in recent months, announcing the formation of a food supply chain security task force and taking steps to scrutinize competition in markets. And fertilizer markets have particularly high levels of concentration.
Canada’s Nutrien and Florida-based Mosaic were responsible for more than 90% of North American phosphate fertilizer and potash production in 2024, according to Farm Action – an ag industry accountability group. On the distribution side, Farm Action notes that just seven companies control 70% of crop input sales, including Nutrien Ag Solutions, the retail business of Nutrien.
During the webinar on Wednesday, Vaden described Nutrien’s and Mosaic’s grip on the market as a “duopoly” that is constraining “fertilizer supply in this country” and driving “up the cost that farmers are paying.”
Representatives from Nutrien and Mosaic did not immediately respond to Agri-Pulse’s requests for comment on Vaden’s remarks.
Vaden singled out the two companies’ joint venture in Canada, Canpotex, which they use to export and market their potash products outside Canada and the U.S., as a particularly concerning enterprise.
“Mosaic and Nutrien have a joint venture in Canada where they openly, their word ‘work together’, my word, ‘collude,’ to control prices up there,” Vaden said. “That would be such a clear violation of the antitrust laws of the United States. They don’t bring that joint venture officially down here.”
But Vaden claimed that the two companies find other means of manipulating U.S. prices.
Mosaic and a slate of other fertilizer companies – including Agrium and PotashCorp, which merged to form Nutrien – faced accusations of price fixing in the early 2010s. The companies settled lawsuits that cost each of them tens of millions of dollars.
Fertilizer consultant Doug Wright told Agri-Pulse that even if there isn’t concrete price fixing, the fact that there are now fewer companies operating in fertilizer markets has led to reduced competition and higher prices.
“There used to be more potash players in the United States, same thing with phosphates,” Wright said. “I don’t think it’s as coordinated as what some of the fingers are trying to point at,” he said, but the price effects are still apparent.
Accordingly, the deputy secretary said on Wednesday that he is closely watching a project to open a new fertilizer mine in Saskatchewan, Canada, that will eventually export to the U.S. and could “break up that duopoly’s control.”
He didn’t specifically name the project, but the Australian mining company BHP has a venture worth more than $10 billion to open a potash mine in the region. The mine would be the 11th such mine in the province and could be operational by the middle of next year, according to a recent press release.
Vaden said that the Trump administration is on the lookout for signs that Nutrien or Mosaic could try to stifle the new competition.
He pledged to protect “any other new market participant that wants to come in, provide new fertilizer supply, and break up the cute little game that Mosaic and Nutrien have been playing for the last several years.”
U.S. farmers have long complained about consolidation in input markets and its effects on prices. On Tuesday, Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, told reporters that Congress and the administration need to heighten industry scrutiny.
“There are just very few companies that control our inputs of all kinds, whether it be chemicals or seed or fertilizer,” Lehman said. “We definitely need to up our effort to figure out what’s going on.”
Vaden also stressed that input costs keep coming up in officials’ conversations with farmers and ranchers as an area of concern.
“Why are officials at USDA focused on this?” he said. “It’s because farmers and others involved in agriculture have told us point-blank, repeatedly, ‘this is an issue you need to tackle.’”
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