Sarah Taber

North Carolina's bravest senator

Nah this tracks

I'm working real hard over on YouTube to get people to click on real farm news that isn't panic bait, and lemme tell ya. It's rough out there

One of my pettiest conspiracy theories is the farm lobby got the US public trained Pavlov-style to lose our damn minds anytime the headlines say "Farm thing? 👉👈 is bad?"

And not gonna lie folks, the replies to this thread are not disproving that hypothesis 💀

I don't know how to tell you this.... everything gets delivered on fossil fuel trucks

so it'll affect fertilizer costs to the same extent it affects everything's costs

Got a wild proposition for you: finish reading the thread before asking "why didn't you talk about ___?"

bsky.app/profile/sara...

re: the rest of the world, the thread does address this

bsky.app/profile/sara...

Indeed

Fertilizer nerd on call, reporting for duty 🫡

keep reading the thread

bsky.app/profile/sara...

the craziest things happen when you continue reading the thread

bsky.app/profile/sara...

*from Peru, not the Persian Gulf.

The high prices are because of tariffs, not Iran.

But that would make sense, so we're not gonna do that

That's not even getting into "Hey, since we've cut off most of our own export markets anyway… couldn't we just stop raising so much corn & soy?"

That would cut US fertilizer demand way down. Cut fert prices for the crops we're still growing. And do a lot to alleviate global fertilizer shortages.

Chart from linked article, showing what % of of each major fertilizer type (nitrogen, phosphorus, & potassium) the US imports, 2000-2024. N has gone down from 21% imported to 6%. Phosphorus is a little up from 2% to 13%. Potassium has gone from 76% to 94%.

The US already makes 96% of the N fertilizer we use.

The fertilizer we import the most is POTASSIUM. Which we get from CANADA.

When we import phosphorus, we get 98% of it from PERU. Not Iran.

So the reason we've had trouble getting those is TARIFFS.

farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/07/us-f...

Map from a Bloomberg article showing how much fertilizer is exported from the Persian Gulf. But the map is missing some really key information... it almost seems deliberate....

So you get crap reporting like this!

See how the map carefully avoids telling you what % of our N fertilizer the US actually gets from the Persian Gulf?

That's because if they did, this wouldn't be a very exciting article!

This BS reporting is like the Ukrainian wheat panic all over again is2fg

Panic! At The Fertilizer Desk, US Edition

Americans: this is your regular reminder that maybe 0.01% of people who write for the news actually understand how fertilizer works.

But their editors all found out that scary headlines about "GLOBAL SHORTAGE??" get clicks.

But people who write the news don't understand that farm workers =/= farmers, so they report it as farmers.

And then Americans hear "farmer" and assume that all farmers around the world have the same financial situation & job, so obviously, it must be a global problem for every single farmer : /

Yeah I'm pretty sure that's what happened. I'm not super well versed in the situation in India. But from what I can tell, the "farmers" at most risk in India are more like farm workers & landless peasants who rent land and/or work for landowners.

a soccer player is laying on his back on the field during a match . Alt: Gif of a soccer player that appears to be faking an injury

Oh yeah farm bankruptcies were at a record low for the last few years.

They're trending back toward the standard rate, and still very low, but the farm lobby is acting like it's the end of life on earth

If it's anything like farm bankruptcy stats, it's technically "on the rise" after record lows in the last few years

& still super low compared to historical norms

They like to trot out stats about how most small farms lose money.

They leave out the part about "Who can afford to own farms that keep losing money? Not poor people!"

If you think you've seen stats showing high poverty rates for farmers, no you haven't. They stopped tracking those when it became clear they're on the low single digits at most, & that's just embarrassing.

Yes, there are little exclaves of farmers that aren't middle+ class private landowners. Half the farmers in AZ are native, often on reservation land that they don't & cannot fully own.

But US farmers are 95% white & 98% affluent. (Eg, middle class & up.)

So you know how we've been hearing "poor struggling farmers are getting pushed out"

for like...a century now?

They're more or less fully gone. The median SMALL family farmer is now a millionaire with a 6-figure income.

Yes, in USDA data "farmer" means "farm operator" (a business owner) not "farm laborer" (a hired worker). There is a sleight of hand used in advocacy: when writers want farmers to sound poor and in need of support, they quote income statistics for all farmers (many of which are small),... (1/2)

... but when they want to justify the large fraction of subsidies that go to large rich farmers instead of small poor farmers, they emphasize that large farmers produce most of the food, which is true (never mind that their mean annual household income > $500k and they don't need the support). (2/2)

It's kinda wild how the US Dept of Labor fully understands farmers are business owners & management. (That's how farmers are classed in labor stats.)

But somehow, "Farmers own a business & property, that means we're mgmt!" is still total news to lots of the folks who Care A Lot About Labor. 🤷‍♀️

The job title "farmer" has always been intentionally slippery in how most Americans use it.

But in the occupational stats, it's people who own the farm. (They may own all the land, rent some, or event rent all of it, but the farm is still their business that they own & operate.)

Mostly a huge student debt trap + ready access to euthanasia drugs afaik. : /

o7 Real stats are featured in the video, with links in the video description.