EP. 63 - How We’re Tackling Sky-High Input Costs for American Corn Growers

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American farmers are looking at a loss of $100 per acre if something doesn't change.

American farmers are facing a profitability crisis in the current markets.

Some economists estimate that growers could LOSE $100 per acre this year if costs and prices continue as they are.

NCGA is always looking for ways to boost corn demand and increase prices for America's crop.

But with skyrocketing input costs, onerous duties on fertilizer, and the spiking cost of diesel fuel, our growers are feeling the pinch from both sides of the equation.

So NCGA has convened a task force aimed at addressing those rising costs as well.

And in this episode, we talk to NCGA First Vice President Matt Frostic, who's leading this effort to find savings for American corn farmers.

He's joined by NCGA VP of Sustainable Production & Value Chain Engagement Sean Arians, NCGA's staff lead on the task force, as well as NCGA staff economist Gretchen Kuck, to explore the tools that NCGA has at its disposal in this time of extreme difficulty.

As always, NCGA's greatest strength is the voice of its members.

And you can get involved in this effort by clicking this link: ncga.com/join-ncga

Direct Share Link: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/ncga?selected=PDM9268065469

Gretchen Kuck

We are looking at the deepest losses we've seen yet in this trail of negative returns, losses of up to $100 an acre. Both low prices and high costs.

Matt Frostic

The emotion is pretty raw. As those bills come in and fertilizer prices are a reality, I think that's going to hit home even harder.

Dusty Weis

Hello, and welcome to the CobCast, Inside the Grind with the National Corn Growers Association. This is where leaders, growers, and stakeholders in the corn industry can turn for big-picture conversations about the state of the industry and its future.

Today, we're digging into one of the issues that's at the top of every farmer's mind: input costs.

This has been a big topic, both around the kitchen table out in farm country, and in the DC beltway. There's no gentle way to put this… Costs are high, they're getting higher, and corn prices aren't keeping up.

We're covering a lot of ground here, so make sure you're following this show on your favorite podcast app, and sign up for the National Corn Growers Association newsletter at NCGA.com.

I'm Dusty Weis, and today we've got an NCGA brain trust joining us to tackle this complicated topic.

First up is a new voice here on the podcast, though certainly not a new name for NCGA members: Matt Frostic, NCGA First Vice President and a corn farmer from Michigan. Matt, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your operation out there in Michigan?

Matt Frostic

Yeah, so I have a crop and livestock operation where we farm what we call the thumb of Michigan. It's north of Detroit, about an hour, give or take, and we have beef cattle, corn, soybeans and sugar beets in our systems.

Dusty Weis

And how long has your family been out there working that piece of land?

Matt Frostic

Forever. I'm a fifth generation, and that's all we've ever known is farming. So yeah.

Dusty Weis

That's incredible. And you're in the thumb of Michigan. I'm from Wisconsin, so we would refer to that as Michigan's Door County.

Matt Frostic

Yeah.

Dusty Weis

Well that's great. Thanks for making time to chat with us here. Also a returning guest to the show, Sean Arians, who serves as NCGA's VP of Sustainable Production and Value Chain Engagement, also farms in Illinois. And as we discovered, a licensed auctioneer as well. Sean, thanks for joining us again.

Sean Arians

Good to be back, Dusty.

Dusty Weis

How are things down by you in Illinois?

Sean Arians

They're a little wet in the south, but headed north to my farm to plant this afternoon, so looking forward to that.

Dusty Weis

Well, good. Steer clear of the frost. We certainly haven't here in Wisconsin yet, but we're getting close. Finally, we're joined by Gretchen Kuck, one of NCGA's staff economists based in our DC office. Gretchen, can you tell us a little bit more about your background?

Gretchen Kuck

Absolutely. I grew up on a farm, but I'm based with NCGA's office in DC, so I deal with a lot of folks that maybe have never seen corn in real life before. So I get to take the numbers and help talk about how important these things are in a way that people can understand.

Dusty Weis

Well, fantastic. It's an important topic that we're discussing today. And so we mentioned the kitchen table a little bit in the introduction to this podcast. So Matt, I'd love to talk with you right now about input costs and how that discussion has played out around your kitchen table here lately.

Matt Frostic

Yeah. As I sit at my kitchen table right now, this has been something that's been an issue for the last 3 or 4 years, but it's kind of accelerated last year when we put this corn crop in. We were looking at trying to at least break even with high volume was our hope. And, you know, cutting some costs here and there strategically to try and make it to the end, thinking that costs would come back in line.

By July, we had a WASDE report that showed record acres and a very good crop coming to fruition. We had looked at summer fill fertilizer costs and the prices didn't come down in those inputs. And so then the code red started to formulate at that point. And that's when NCGA started putting the task force together to really address the issue.

And I think when guys brought the combines to the field and, you know, you always hope that something's going to happen and we would come to that break even possibility. But with the bushels not necessarily being there in many areas and the high cost still being prevalent, it put it in high speed at that point.

Dusty Weis

Yeah. I mean, both through NCGA and both through your role in your community, you're talking to a lot of farmers, presume that just about everybody across the country and across your part of the world are feeling the same thing, right? What do we know about the broader farm economy?

Matt Frostic

Yeah, it's impacted everybody because there's several areas of the country where they had drought to deal with in the last three to four years. So even when the prices were decent, they didn't have the volumes to recover. And so a lot of cash, a lot of borrowing power was already used up coming into, you know, this year. And so that's been a struggle from the east side to the west side, north to south.

Certain areas have been okay in that they've had volume. But even, with what's happened in the last six months, the heart of the corn belt's impacted by this.

Dusty Weis

Now, my grandpa used to say that if you ever meet a farmer who doesn't have a gripe with either the weather or the markets, you should probably check his pulse. But I want to be clear about something here that this is more than just kind of the usual good-natured grousing that we have. This is a real problem with stakes that could impact everybody.

Gretchen and Sean, maybe a question for you here. What do you say to someone who's not really familiar with the farm economy to make them understand that they've got skin in this game, even if they don't farm?

Gretchen Kuck

I'll talk numbers all day. When we're talking about food prices, about rural communities, about what this means actually when farmers are in the red, as they're looking to be this year for the fourth season in a row, looking at what that means for the ability of a farmer to stay in business.

Matt kind of got to this a second ago that we've had a couple years in a row where returns have been low, prices have been low and input costs have been high, and what that looks like for cash flow and borrowing and lending and the investment and the planning and the stability of an individual operation and the agricultural economy at large.

I mean, there's a lot of stress out there, and that's going to permeate and reverberate through all of the different entities that a farm as an individual supports and the farm economy supports. And if you're looking at food prices and inflation and energy, the agricultural economy is part of all of those factors that people are looking at right now.

Dusty Weis

I think it bears repeating that when you talk about farmers being in the red, we're talking about they're losing money, on the crop, year in and year out. And if somebody gets paid to go to a job, they're going to keep going to that job. But if somebody is paying money to go and do that job, how much longer are they going to keep doing that job?

How much longer are they going to be able to keep doing that job, even though it's an important job?

Gretchen Kuck

For sure, and we are looking at the deepest losses we've seen yet in this trail of negative returns, losses of up to $100 an acre for your average farmer. And that's pretty intensive, especially when you're talking about scaling that to bushels and the different struggles that farmers are facing on all ends, both low prices and high costs.

Dusty Weis

$100 per acre. That's incredible when you hear about that. That's just I don't know how you come back from that. So let's talk about how we come back from that.

There's a task force that's been put together by the National Corn Groves Association. Sean, I hear that you were tapped to help lead the group dedicated to this issue.

What can you tell us about it?

Sean Arians

Yeah, I am certainly honored to serve as the staff lead for the group. However, Matt is the chair of the task force, and that's really important as we think about… our accountability is to US corn growers and so much of the work of our organization, this effort is grower-led as well.

So what happened was a little over a year ago, our action team kind of raised a flag to the board and said, we really feel this is important, that the organization start some work and try to better understand the input side of the equation and what's going on.

So the board officially created the task force in September of 2025, and had certainly been doing work in the space long before that. But, you know, it just kind of got a little bit more of a microscope on it. And Gretchen and Krista, our economists, have been great partners in helping us really dive into the numbers much deeper than what you already heard.

And trying to understand, as we think about inputs, fertilizer often gets the big target. There are other things, though, that play into that as we think about diesel fuel, crop protection, seed, all of the inputs are really in this bucket of high prices. And those things, as you alluded to, have significant trickle-down effects to both the farmers and the rural economies that not only industry is in, but our farmers are living and working in as well.

So it's been a journey here, as we've asked a lot of hard questions and tried to learn how do we best approach these and what's the right answer. And I would really put quotes around the "right answer" because it's something that's been building for years, and to fix it overnight is pretty tough to do, Dusty.

Dusty Weis

Where are you guys at in the process right now, Matt, of examining the problem? Certainly we're all very familiar with what the problem is, but one of the great strengths of the National Corn Growers Association is that it allows our members to band together and exert their combined influence on industry stakeholders, on government. So is this the kind of thing where there's a government fix to be found?

Is this the kind of thing where there's a fix to be found out in the industry, in some of the big input providers out there, or where are we looking to for answers right now?

Matt Frostic

It's a bit of an all of the above approach. We've tried to stay comprehensive and make sure that when we move in a direction that we have good data to back what we're doing. So kudos to our staff for getting us that information and how we can make decisions.

At this point, we've brought light onto the subject, and we've had a lot of good traction with the administration at this point too to work with them to bring some of these issues to light.

And you're seeing some of that happening at the DC level, but we're continuing to bring in data to really understand how pricing happens here versus in foreign countries on the same products. We're looking at how some of the tariffs and CBDs impact what we're doing, and they all have impacts. And there's also more of that story too.

Quite frankly it's a world market. And some of these impacts are happening everywhere, not just here. And the reality is we're like 7% to 10% of the world market. So we don't quite have the impact that we thought we had.

But with that, there are some things that we'll continue to dive into and bring to light and bring solutions to. As Sean alluded to, these issues seeded 20 years ago or more, and it's not going to happen overnight, and it's going to take time to get it back on the right track.

Dusty Weis

Let's examine the fertilizer issue for a moment, because I know that that's certainly one where the pain that we're feeling is kind of the most acute here. And some of that stems from the disruption that's happening in the Middle East right now with the conflict there and the closure of trade through the Strait of Hormuz.

Now certainly NCGA is not going to be at the table to help mediate the conflict or anything like that. But what is the task force focused on when it comes to fertilizer, Sean?

Sean Arians

Yeah, I'll start off Dusty and then turn it over to Gretchen, who can give a bit more detail as well. As we alluded to, this issue started several years ago, specific to some of the things NCGA has been working on, and we've got a great team of folks in DC, including Nancy on our team, who's our trade policy lead that dives into this every day and thoroughly understands it well.

What happened, though, is several years ago, one of the two US phosphate producers, Mosaic particularly, petitioned the government to impose tariffs on phosphate imports from Morocco and Russia. Really on the contention that they were overly subsidizing those exports. So what happens is, as we tend to think of tariffs, that adds to the price of a product that's going to potentially be used by US farmers.

And certainly as we've seen this now, that tariff is under what's called the Sunset review. And we've been bold in asking for companies like Mosaic and J.R. Simplot to really pull away from that and say they're okay without that tariff, because it's really detrimental to the agriculture economy. And so far they have not said, hey, let's change our stance.

Instead, they've kind of leaned into wanting that tariff and more. And that's just really a sad day for American agriculture. And while we understand companies need to be profitable, we need to balance that where it's not on the backs of the farmers that they are intending to maybe help with being a producer of those products.

So we recognize that this is one example of some of the work that we've done, been engaged in a number of countervailing duties conversations and trade and tariff conversations because those all are at play.

As Matt alluded to, this is a world market. Gretchen can probably share a little bit more on the US perspective or the size of our market compared to the globe. But when we talk about these tariffs, every additional tariff that's put on, where's that go? It goes to the farmer.

And as we know the farmer isn't the one setting the price. So they're really in a pickle when it comes to how they pass those costs on.

And that just doesn't flow like it does in most supplier value chains.

Gretchen Kuck

To follow up on what Sean said, especially on the phosphate, I think this is one more instance or example of where this has been a long-standing issue that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has brought to light.

We have a relatively low dependency on imported phosphate. But when you're talking about a market that's been operating in really tight supply-demand conditions like fertilizer, specifically phosphate, has been in the past few years with only a few other suppliers, the competition for those last tons is really important.

And when we have penalties and things that are impacting our market and our ability to source from different sources like the CVD, that makes it really complicated.

And now what we're seeing, where we might have turned for alternatives beforehand like Saudi Arabia, we're really limiting our ability to source that on the global market.

And it does have financial impacts when you're not able to turn and make those decisions freely, especially compared to the rest of our competitors in the global market. And so the CBD tariffs a lot of things to being able to turn to the market and have US importers and farmers compete for the supplies is really, really important.

Dusty Weis

So Matt, what's the task force recommending then? And what's the course of action here as it pertains to these phosphate tariffs?

Matt Frostic

Well, first and foremost we're trying to mitigate the CBDs. Again, that's going to be a long term fight at this point because Mosaic and Simplot are pushing back. And from there we'll continue to build on getting more transparency in the market so that we can all understand how these price points are come to. And if there's corrections that we can make as an industry, then we can do that at that point.

Dusty Weis

Another pain point that I've heard about from some folks who I know out in the field right now is the high cost of diesel. This is something that hits everything. It's not unique to farmers. I mean, school districts are feeling it with school buses. Long haul truckers impact the cost of everything that's out there.

But the tractor doesn't move without diesel fuel, and that cost is up 60% from a year ago.

Now, is this one of those things where there's not much that we can do about it? We've just got to ride it out? Or how are you and your neighbors coping with the high cost of diesel right now, Matt?

Matt Frostic

So this is new to you in the last two to three months with what's going on in the Middle East. At this point, I guess I would say that there's not a lot we can do from an immediate standpoint, other than how we can manage our own farms and use less diesel fuel at this point. And the reality is our world is seasonal, so we'll use a lot in May and June, tail off through the summer, and then we'll need a lot at harvest time.

Dusty Weis

I mean, the guys that I'm talking to, they're talking about just doing fewer passes through the fields over the summer and taking the hit on yields. And they think that they'll come out ahead financially from doing that. Is that what you're seeing as well?

Matt Frostic

I've heard a lot of extremes out there. I've heard of guys that are planting corn with no fertilizer this year because it just doesn't pencil, limited passes.

Those are some pretty extreme ideas when you think about what our industry is in. But yet I look at my kitchen table and honestly, the best thing that could happen to me is a Prevent Plant situation.

Dusty Weis

Yeah, yeah, it's that tough. I'll say one thing that I've noticed that might be a little bit different from when prices spiked four years ago, at least from where I'm sitting right now, is it feels to me… and correct me if I'm wrong on this… but it feels to me like farmers voices are being heard a little more on this.

Over the past year, but especially in the last month, every time I turn on the news, there's a farmer on the news talking about the impact that this is all having on their operations. Now, certainly, that's a result of the good work that NCGA is doing advocating here. But what sort of a difference does it make from an advocacy standpoint to get our voices heard on this?

Matt Frostic

We've got a great comms team that's been very creative about getting us out in front of the public on this, and especially those that need to see it in DC. And so kudos to the staff for getting us in that position. And I can tell you after, I think next week will be my seventh trip to DC this year, fighting for inputs or E15 or whatever that can facilitate our industry to be in a better position this year.

And I can tell you, when you're face to face with those in Congress or those in the industry that make decisions in DC, can it happen overnight? No. But certainly when you're on the forefront, long-term decisions can be made that put our industry in a better position.

Dusty Weis

When times get dark like this, sometimes it's worth just pausing at the beginning of each day and trying to find one thing that you could feel hopeful or feel grateful about. And so, as we wind this conversation down here, I wanted to ask each of you, just as you look at this situation here, this pile of lemons that we're trying to make lemonade out of.

What's one thing that's making each one of you guys feel a little bit hopeful right now as we work the problem? Sean, let's start with you.

Sean Arians

Yeah, I would maybe key off of where Matt just landed there, and highlight that agriculture is often referred to as the backbone of America. And while there are a lot of other industries that are also that, at the end of the day, farmers are critical to infrastructure in their rural communities that keep jobs in rural America. And those jobs also support other jobs and other communities.

It's just really part of this, call it American made, and especially as we think about America's crop for America's future and what that means for the next 250 years of America, it's critical that we talk about the economic impact. And when farmers are losing $100 an acre, as Gretchen alluded to, we've got to make sure people understand that if that's the case and farmers go out of business, communities die.

And when communities die, that means that the economic influence and the impact isn't as great as it once was, that that goes elsewhere. And so as I think about our influence, we know that we've got a story to tell that has an economic benefit that we need to continue to share and help others understand that they are connected to this, whether they think they are or not.

And that's kind of where we started this morning of everybody has a role to play in this, whether you're close to the farm or not. And that could be simply fueling up with E15 at a pump. It could be buying a corn-based product.

And those are all little things that add up to really make a difference in every consumer and every American's role in this.

Dusty Weis

Sean, if your advice is that I need to increase my consumption of nachos, I'm all about that, I'm here for it. But what about you Gretchen, what's making you feel hopeful right now?

Gretchen Kuck

I think. I mean, I'm on this every day, right? 24/7 I'm thinking about those numbers, those dollar signs and what there is. And there's also a lot of emotion out there in the countryside, as there should be. This is livelihoods on the line.

But I've been really impressed with how both the input task force and folks thinking about demand and in the future, you know, stuss that's a little more abstract about the investments we have to make over right now and in the next decade, have been really strategic about trying to get it right, right?

Not just throwing everything that sticks, but making sure that where we're putting our resources, where we're looking at problems and where we can offer solutions are, I think Sean said this earlier, the right solution, the best solution we can.

And so the ability for folks to kind of step back and look and really get into the nitty gritty, you know, the stuff I see every day and kind of is hard and technical to do and look at and explain, has been really hopeful and inspiring that we are going to get it right when we put all of this work in this effort into these initiatives.

Dusty Weis

Matt, you're the one that's staring down a ledger right now that's promising you $100 per acre loss for every acre of corn that you plant. What's keeping you going in this moment?

Matt Frostic

At this point, the emotion is pretty raw. You say, what keeps you going? I think sometimes it's just getting up and getting outside and the birds are chirping and the sun comes up and you're on the right side of the grass, and we're going to figure out where we're going to be at the end of the day.

I think the stress that every farmer sees and feels today is that whether your first, second, third, fourth or fifth or beyond generation farm, you don't want it to end on your dime, and you feel like those decisions that you've made impact that.

And the reality is, these things are far beyond what is happening at the farm level. But it's hard to externalize that.

So the emotions I think are really real. As some of these farmers who haven't really paid attention to inputs or hoping that things went down, as those bills come in and fertilizer prices are a reality, I think that's going to hit home even harder in the next, you know, four to six weeks.

From an organization standpoint on how we serve, I'm hopeful because when we go to DC and when we talk about our industry, there's an importance there that people see of national security, whether it's food or energy. And so we're a strong cornerstone for this nation to have a strong food, fiber and energy policy. And we're a part of that.

And so in the moments of tragedy and issues is when you can fix problems and fix them for the next 20 to 30, 40 years, or at least the foreseeable future. And that gives me hope, because I've got kids and grandkids right now that, you know, at this point, the best hope is that it's here for them.

Dusty Weis

Matt, as you speak, I think there's a lot of producers who are probably nodding their heads and feeling a lot of the same what you're feeling, and if they'd like to get involved and help out with the effort, either by contacting their local legislators or getting involved with the task force themselves, how do they do that?

Sean Arians

Yeah, a really easy way is to be engaged with your state Corn Growers Association. Really, as we think about all of these issues, they start at the grassroots, and that's with our state organizations and the members. So I've got my lifetime membership to Illinois Corn Growers. And it's recognizing that that's the pathway to both state and federal policy. And our team at National certainly helps those individuals communicate what's going on in DC.

Matt alluded that next week is yet another E15 push to help some of the economics on the output side, those are ways that get involved with your state. They will certainly take your volunteer time to do what Matt and many others are doing of leaving the farm in busy season, because they recognize that it's important that we have a message and a voice that's strong and bold in DC, and those things are hard.

It's hard when you've got a planter sitting, but at the end of the day, as Matt said, it's crucial for the success of the future generations and our industry that we take the time and make the time now, otherwise we won't have the opportunity to do it in the future.

Dusty Weis

Yeah, and it all starts with an email. Send an email saying, "Hey, my name is Dusty. I want to help. I'm motivated to help. Give me some work to do," because there's always work to do and they'll give it to you.

Matt Frostic

What we need from that average corn grower out there today, as we go through this E15 process, is to contact your legislator either through a call to action with the NCGA website, or if you have a personal relationship with your representative.

They need to know how important this legislation is for their farm. It helps that we're there face to face, but it really solidifies it when you send that email. They see them and they count and they put them in a pile and they see how important it is when the industry responds to that. So I can't stress enough that we need that call to action from every grower out there.

Dusty Weis

We'll put a link for how to get involved into the episode description for this podcast. But folks, I got to thank you all so much for joining us and sharing your expertise here. It's a critical time for the corn industry, and it's good to see corn farmers are stepping up and rising to the challenge yet again.

Matt Frostic, NCGA's First Vice President, NCGA VP of Sustainable Production and Value Chain Engagement Sean Arians, and staff economist Gretchen Cook. Thank you all so much for joining us here on the Cobcast.

And thank you for listening. We hope you'll join us again next month for another episode of the Cobcast: Inside the Grind with the National Corn Growers Association.

If you're on X, you can follow @NationalCorn for more news and updates from NCGA. Visit NCGA.com to sign up for the association's email newsletter, and make sure you're following this show in your favorite podcast app.

The Cobcast is brought to you by the National Corn Growers Association, with editing by Matt Covarrubias. And it's produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses. PodcampMedia.com.

For the National Corn Growers Association, I'm Dusty Weis.

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