For corn farmers across Kentucky, April means it’s time to till fields and plant acre after acre of the row crop.
The Hunt family has farmed the fields of Christian County for decades. This year, though, fourth-generation farmer Brandon Hunt said the growing season has come with an undercurrent of stress, with small agricultural producers across the U.S. under financial strain stemming from the country’s war with Iran.
Tariffs and inflated input costs
In between tilling and fertilizing the family land from the cab of his red tractor, Hunt said he expects to see negative returns on his harvest this year. He said input costs were on the rise before the conflict began and that farmers’ margins were already hurting because of tariffs on fertilizer and metals – and inflated prices for things like seed and chemicals.
“This is really bad timing for the U.S. farmer. We're entering our fourth year of negative returns on profitability at the farm level,” Hunt said. “Fertilizer prices don't ever come down as fast as they go up, and we were already dealing with record costs per acre before the conflict in the Middle East.”
In 2025, President Donald Trump established a 50% tariff on aluminum and steel, both metals frequently used to manufacture tools and machinery for farming. On top of equipment being more expensive, many farmers have paid higher fertilizer prices since 2021 because of a specific kind of tariff – known as countervailing duties – on imported phosphate fertilizers.
While many policies, like countervailing duties, are often intended to level the playing field for domestic producers by enforcing higher rates on imported goods from international sellers, it often means that higher prices are passed on to consumers – in this case, farmers.
Fertilizer and supply chain disruptions
Fertilizer is key for agricultural producers and, for those growing row crops like corn and wheat, nitrogen-rich fertilizer is a necessity. Unfortunately for farmers, a lot of the world’s supply of nitrogen fertilizer comes from – or through – the Middle East.
Since the U.S. conflict with Iran started earlier this year, closures and blockades of the Strait of Hormuz have impeded global shipments of a variety of goods – like fertilizer. With ships unable to pass through the strait, supply issues have already begun to affect the U.S. economy – and Americans’ wallets.
According to the United Nations, one-third of global seaborne fertilizers pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and traffic through the crucial naval passageway has slowed to a crawl. While the U.S. also imports nitrogen fertilizer from countries like Canada and Russia, commercial ships getting rerouted from the Persian Gulf or stalled by the closures has caused prices to skyrocket.
Typically, corn farmers plant in spring and apply fertilizer throughout the year to ensure a fruitful harvest and high crop yield. All row crops need some amount of nitrogen fertilizer, but corn requires more of it than any other crop.
Lester said he’s already bought fertilizer for the spring, but he knows he will need more come the fall. He’s already started reaching out to suppliers, but he’s found that market instabilities are leaving him with more questions than answers.
“There were some places that would not even give us a price because the markets were moving so much that they couldn't even give us a price,” Lester said. “We had some advisors telling us to lock in some prices, but we weren't even able to do that.”
While all nitrogen fertilizers are becoming more expensive, the price point of one type in particular is swiftly rising. Urea is a popular and widely-used nitrogen fertilizer due to its high concentration. Many of the major suppliers for the urea that American farmers use are based in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt.
According to a Farm Bureau survey analyzing the war’s economic impacts at the farm level, the cost of nitrogen fertilizers have risen by 30% and urea prices alone have increased by 47%.
Fertilizer is not the only import seeing war-induced price spikes recently. Prices for oil and gasoline have been on the climb since the war began, with a national average of roughly $4 per gallon, according to data from the American Automobile Association. Meanwhile, farm diesel fuel has gone up 46%, according to Farm Bureau survey data.
Nearly 40% of the world’s crude oil supplies and 19% of the globally traded liquified natural gas – which itself is crucial for the production of fertilizers – also pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Micah Lester farms 7,000 acres of row crops in Trigg and Christian counties. Farms like his need a lot of fuel to run the machinery that’s essential for the daily operations, and those costs add up quickly.
“Most farmers, when they order fuel for their farm, they're ordering about a semi-load, and it really hurts when you get 8,000 gallons of fuel coming in, and it's gone up $1 a gallon,” Lester said.
High-priced impacts of international trade policies aren’t the only thing hurting farmers’ finances. Market prices for their crops are low, too.
“Whatever the market's trading at is what we have to sell it at, and so those prices are down for our products that we sell, but our input prices – fertilizer, seed, fuel, chemicals – it's all inflated,” said Lester. “So it's making a very tough ag economy right now, at least in the row crop world.”
Looking forward
With peace talks between the Trump administration and Iranian leadership up in the air, it’s unlikely that farmers will see any sort of immediate financial relief.
Gbenga Ajilore is the chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and studies the intersection of rural issues and U.S. economic policy. He said, once prices spike like this, it can take a long time for them to fall again and, even then, they’ll likely still be higher than before.
“We're not going to revert back to the status quo anytime soon, because part of it with the conflict is that there's been energy infrastructure that’s been damaged, and so it’s just going to take a while to rebuild those infrastructures and to get production back up again,” Ajilore said.
Ajilore also said that – once the conflict ends – Iran could turn around and start to charge tolls once free trade restarts in the region. That’s something he says could see more increased costs passed on to farmers, and even influence what crops farmers decide to plant beyond this growing season.
“Most things that we produce are corn or soybeans. Corn uses a lot of nitrogen fertilizer. So because that really spiked in price, farmers might start shifting what they're actually going to plant towards soybeans, which uses less fertilizer than corn,” Ajilore said. “We’re probably going to see a lot more soybean production in the future relative to corn.”
With so many question marks when it comes to planning, economists and farmers alike are worried about the financial landscape of the industry. Christian County farmer Joseph Sisk said he’s concerned that many producers will have to make hard choices about what to grow and whether or not they should plant at all.
“There is so much financial pressure on the system right now that you are going to, those of us in farming are aware that there are going to be some number of operations around that don't survive it, and that's going to be really hard to watch,” Sisk.
