It’s that time of year again when your loyal scribe looks out into his wheatfields wondering when I can put nitrogen on my wheat crop. I always remember when I look at wheatfields especially in spring that wheat is the “cockroach of grains”. In other words, it is very hard to kill and I might add from an Ontario perspective, sometimes it doesn’t look all that good in early spring. However, give me a few warm days and put a little bit of nitrogen on the wheat and suddenly the countryside turns into green splendor. There is nothing like a good looking wheatfield in spring that is off to the races.

Of course, part of the management in our wheat crops in southwestern Ontario has to do with placing the right fertilizer in the right place using the 4R’s. I find it’s also about having a lot of luck to get through the winter. Needless to say, the first part is probably the most important getting that fertilizer where it’s needed, whether that’s corn soybeans or the wheat crop currently breaking emergence here in southwestern Ontario.

I remember a few years ago I walked out into a field of rice paddies near Sylhet Bangladesh. On that walk I came upon a particularly attractive rice patty where the rice looked lush green. I mentioned to my colleague how good the rice paddies looked and I wondered what type of fertilizer had been applied. Unbeknownst to me, the local Bangladeshi farmer was behind me, and he retorted something to my Bangladeshi friend about this big white guy looking at his rice paddies.  I asked what type of fertilizer he used, and he said something to the extent of some type of manure in that part of the world. It all worked, we looked at each other and smiled and as farmers you could feel the bond between us on that simple management practice. Crops need fertilizer whether it’s in southwestern Ontario or northeastern Bangladesh.

Getting that fertilizer over the last couple of years has been particularly taxing for our local fertilizer suppliers here in eastern Canada. As you all know, punitive tariffs were applied to a large amount of fertilizer that came into Eastern Canada last year and this cost was passed on to local farmers. It amounted to $34.1 million which was stolen from eastern Canadian farmers. Meanwhile, the Russians that produced the fertilizer and loaded it on ships didn’t feel any of the pain. It’s been an ongoing issue this past year in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces.

In last week’s federal budget, we got our answer.  Our Federal Minister of Agriculture and Food Marie-Claude Bibeau said direct reimbursement was not possible.   What was announced instead was the $34.1 million was put into the Farm Climate Action Fund to try and help eastern Canadian farmers develop the best practices for management of their fertilizer and reduce emissions.  I disagree with this policy.  Some eastern Canadian farmers paid these tariffs, but everybody will be eligible to collect from this fund.

I will leave the politics out of this because that’s a zero-sum game.  Canadian politicians are diligent people and I simply disagree with this policy.  The Canada Border Service Agency did what they did to extract the tariffs, but from what I understand it’s still not over. Lawyers for our private fertilizer companies in eastern Canada will continue to challenge the bureaucratic mechanisms and the rules which were followed, which led to all of this. Maybe, just maybe the money which was stolen will be returned someday.

The reality is it has left the eastern Canadian fertilizer market fractured both physically and psychologically over the last year. For instance, for many years they had become accustomed to buying fertilizer from countries who are on the wrong side now of the Russian Ukrainian conflict. There are now sanctions against Russia as well as other nations such as Belarus, where a large part of global nitrogen comes from.  Eastern Canadian merchandisers of fertilizer have been burnt once or twice in that area of the world from our own Canadian government and are not necessarily willing to go back there if peace suddenly breaks out.

What they were faced with was finding fertilizer sources from countries who were on the right side of sanctions. Could these people be trusted, could they load a boat, do they have the port facilities to actually do what they say?  Clearly, there is no longer a fertilizer shortage in the world, but within regions there are shortages from time to time. Finding a reliable source of fertilizer for eastern Canada remains a challenge.  It is one thing to say we can go elsewhere for fertilizer, but it is another thing making it all work. Thankfully, over the last 12 months eastern Canadian fertilizer merchandisers have cobbled together other supply chains. This has come after a total fracture of the fertilizer supply line that they had had for many years.

This doesn’t mean that everybody is sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya, far from it.  This whole episode should serve as a lesson that sometimes the unexpected can happen in an arena that is hardly imaginable. Hello, Mr. fertilizer buyer from Eastern Canada, I just want you to know that your fertilizer ship has been sunk this afternoon in the Black Sea! Good luck to you.

Yes, it is such a long and winding road.  When you fill your spreaders and planters this spring with fertilizer, don’t take it for granted. The Russia Ukraine war has caused so much fracture in so many markets.  The question is, what’s next?  The ramifications from whatever could be infinitely vast.