Senator Marshall: This Will Lower Fertilizer Costs by 20%

Senator Marshall Joins USDA Press Conference on Lowering Fertilizer Prices

Washington - Today,U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), delivered remarks at a press conference hosted by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins. The Senator was joined by other members of the Trump administration and his colleagues in Congress to highlight the Trump administration and Congress's efforts to lower fertilizer prices.

Senator Marshall highlighted his Lowering Input Costs for American Farmers Act, legislation to lower the cost of fertilizer for American farmers. The bill would eliminate tariffs and countervailing duties (CVDs) on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco, delivering direct relief to American farmers crushed by rising input costs.

Click HERE or on the image above for Senator Marshall's full remarks.

Remarks as delivered:

"Well, thank you, Madam Secretary. I want you to come up here just for a second. And I just want to say that no one has done more, no administration has done more for the American farmer or rural America than the Trump administration, and it all starts right here at USDA. So on behalf of all the farmers, ranchers, and people in rural America, thank you so much."

"You know, the administration has done its job, and now it's time for Congress to do our job. We're dropping a bill today, it's called the Lowering Input Costs for American Farmers Act. What this bill does is eliminate the Countervailing Duties on Morocco's phosphate. This would lower the cost of phosphate fertilizer by over 20%. Those numbers are from Texas A&M, so I hope you'll still accept this. So it'll lower the cost of phosphate fertilizer by over 20%, that's $150 a ton, and that's real money when it comes to a Kansas farmer. But we need more than that, and we've also introduced a package of fertilizer bills as well."

"This didn't start yesterday. What the Secretary was talking about, this really started when Russia invaded Ukraine. That was 2022, and what we saw were fertilizer prices jump up 50%, and it's just not nitrogen fertilizer though - about 20-25% of the nitrogen fertilizers are still made in Russia, traverse the Black Sea, but Belarus still accounts for about 35% of the potash world exports as well. So that war really started all this, and that's when we started working hard on fertilizer."

"We have a package of five bills, they're bipartisan bills, and they work together to lower farmers' fertilizer costs by requiring price transparency and market research, promoting domestic production and competition, [and] reducing regulatory barriers. They also create pathways for one of my favorite areas, for biostimulants at lower cost alternatives. And I say it's bipartisan - we have leadership from Senator Thune, Klobuchar, Grassley, Baldwin, Ernst, Warnock, Hyde-Smith, Padilla, in addition to Hoeven's bill. And, of course, the Chairman of the Ag Committee here as well is going to give us a hearing very soon, and hopefully that will be followed up by a markup on these bills so we can start lowering fertilizer prices tomorrow. Thanks so much."

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