High fertilizer prices impacting farmers
The price of fuel isn’t the only thing skyrocketing right now, the cost of fertilizer is also expensive. A 4th generation farmer with Advanced Ag Technologies Travis Albrecht says the price is the highest he has seen and is double where it was in 2021. This is causing significant impacts for farmers. Albrecht says they have managed to cut back on their use of fertilizer.
“For us, in South Eastern Alberta everybody is coming off a really dry year from last year, so revenues are down. We didn’t have a whole lot of crops to sell last year and there wasn’t a whole lot of snow this winter so everybody is a little gun shy with how much money to spend with their inputs. With it being really dry with the high price of fertilizer you really want to try and cut down on your risk to your reward. I know we have substantially cut back on our farm. We are down probably 60 per cent of what we were usually going to put in the ground for spring just because to us it was unaffordable to try and push yields any higher in a dry year,” said Travis Albrecht with Advanced AG Technologies.
Albrecht says the high price could have a lot to do with supply chain issues and transportation costs.