Anyone who has been watching fertilizer prices at all closely for the past year probably already has a case of motion sickness. That’s true of farmers. It’s also true of retailers.
Yet somehow, the two groups must figure out a way to shake hands on deals they both can stomach.
It isn’t going to be easy. Prices have been riding a roller-coaster that shot them into the stratosphere, then pulled them back to earth again as crop prices and fertilizer demand dropped over the past several months.
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Some farmers took a deep breath and bit the bullet last fall, purchasing some very expensive fertility products because they figured prices had nowhere to go but up and up and up until spring.
Others held their breaths and waited, hoping that macro trends within the agriculture industry would take some of the sting out of prices over the winter, despite the historical trends.
So far it looks like the second group won the guessing game.
If you go one step up the supply chain, however, retailers didn’t have even that much choice. For them, waiting it out simply hasn’t been an option.
Canada’s ag input retailers faced the tough necessity last fall of writing huge cheques to fill their storage facilities in preparation for this spring. If they didn’t, they d be heading toward spring and the possibility they’d get caught in a vicious supply crunch.
