Mike Pearson tells listeners about a new proposed legislation regarding fertilizer.

New legislation aims to bring transparency to the fertilizer market after the past few years of wild swings in the market place.

The Fertilizer Research legislation would require the secretary of ag to investigate the fertilizer markets and report back within one year of the bill being passed.

3 Farm state Senators Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Joni Ernst (Iowa), and Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin) are leading the bipartisan effort to bring transparency to the factors driving the cost of fertilizer. 

The trio has introduced legislation to find out about the recent changes in market-- and driving concerns about market consolidation as well as potential antitrust issues.

The report would be published on the USDA website and would be expected to cover market trends over past 25 years. Details on imported fertilizer, the impacts on import tariffs and counter dumping duties as well as the scale of fertilizer manufacturers consolidation would also be addressed.

A separate bill was introduced but could be included in the farm bill which will be up for discussion in 2024.

However, fertilizer professionals say the fertilizer market has corrected itself over past 18 months and the bill may not be needed.

It's also been noted that the world problems with fertilizer are more of a problem than domestic issues when it comes to the wild price hikes.

Key fertilizer ingredients such as UAN, Pot ash and urea have also seen price declines.

Farm Progress America is a daily look at key issues in agriculture. It is produced and presented by Mike Pearson, farm broadcaster and host of This Week in Agribusiness.