800 326 9054A class-action lawsuit filed Friday alleges that major U.S. manufacturers of fertilizer have conspired since 2021 to raise fertilizer prices and keep them high.
“When prices for an essential input are artificially inflated, the impact falls squarely on farmers and ripples across the food system. This case is about restoring competition in a market that is foundational to American agriculture,” Greg Asciolla, partner and chair of DiCello Levitt’s antitrust and competition litigation practice, said in a news release.
The defendants include Mosaic, Nutrien, CF Industries, Koch Agronomic Services, Yara International and Canpotex. The lawsuit sorts the companies into “nitrogen defendants” (CF Industries, Nutrien, Koch, and Yara), “phosphorus defendants” (Nutrien and Mosaic), and “potash defendants” (Nutrien, Mosaic, and Canpotex)
Union Line Farms of Hopkinton, Iowa, is the sole plaintiff at this point. The lawsuit filed Friday is the second such complaint in the past week. A New York farm filed a similar action last week in federal court in Illinois.
If approved by the court, the class would include anyone who bought NPK fertilizers since Jan. 1, 2021.
“Beginning in or around 2021, NPK Fertilizer prices departed from historical norms and began increasing at unprecedented rates,” the complaint says. “NPK Fertilizer prices spiked dramatically throughout 2021 and 2022 and remained elevated well after the supply shocks defendants claimed were responsible subsided. These inflated prices are a result of defendants’ conspiracies.”
“During the 2021-2022 spike, the prices U.S. farmers, like plaintiff and members of the class, paid for NPK Fertilizers increased by over 60%. These increases added an estimated $128,000 in costs per farm in 2022.”
The suit says fertilizer prices have moved “in tandem.”
“Publicly available pricing disclosures show a strong parallel pattern: a sharp increase in 2021 to 2022, price decreases in 2023, and renewed increases beginning in 2024 and continuing through the present,” the suit says.
The lawsuit cites comments by Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden about Mosaic and Nutrien. In January, he said on a webinar hosted by the Agricultural Law Center that the companies had been “constraining supply and driving up the price that farmers pay” for fertilizers.
“It’s unacceptable, we’re not going to allow these two companies to do anything to undermine … 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,” Vaden said.
Mosaic and Nutrien are members of Canpotex, “a Canadian export marketing agency through which defendants collectively sell their Canadian potash into overseas markets,” the suit says. “Canpotex allows defendants to share a range of competitively sensitive data, including production data, pricing information, and sales volumes. The data Canpotex collects is data which would normally be kept confidential given its competitively sensitive nature.”
The lawsuit also notes the concentrated nature of the fertilizer industry and says “farmers have recognized that consolidation has led to higher prices, quoting a North Dakota farmer who told NPR, “when you have monopolies control fertilizer, that’s what happens.”
Nutrien and 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. Five companies – CF Industries, Nutrien, Koch, and Yara – hold 82% of the nitrogen capacity, according to the group.
Agri-Pulse reached out to the companies named in the lawsuit for comment. In a statement, Yara commented on the lawsuit in Illinois that it “remains confident in the integrity of its business practices and commitment to compliance and intends to defend itself vigorously against these claims.”
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*Sourced from Agri-Pulse.