The Cost Of Fertilizer and Fertilizer Plant Fire

[SawyerTed]

With chemicals in short supply for the various reasons, fertilizer prices have been going way up.  The last price I got for a ton of 17-17-17 was $1,000.  I remember when it was below $200.

What is now worse for us is the Weaver Fertilizer Company in Winston Salem has been on fire since Monday and is still burning.  There is ten times more ammonium nitrate in that plant than the Texas plant that exploded nearly 10 years ago. There's over 600 tons of ammonium nitrate at the Weaver Plant and on rail cars on the siding next to the plant.

Fire fighters went in on Monday trying to control the fire but backed out of the immediate area after a few hours.  There's been a one mile radius voluntary evacuation in place since Monday night.  Wake Forest University has cancelled classes and warned students to stay indoors as much as possible.  The campus is just outside of the evacuation zone but many off campus students do live inside the zone. Area schools are on remote learning, businesses are closed, roads are closed and there are air quality warnings due to the fire.

I'm hoping the rain we are getting is helping rather than hindering the situation.

Here is the link to the local station's latest new on the fire 

Explosion still possible from North Carolina fertilizer plant fire

Everyone from vegetable gardeners, landscapers, lawn services, hobby farmers, cattle farmers, local fertilizer dealers, hardware stores, grading companies and many others will feel this tragedy in the pocketbook in our region.  

Some may ask why the plant is in the middle of town.  The short answer is "it wasn't when the plant started"  Winston Salem grew around the plant.  Years ago it was well away from Downtown.  Now there are over 6,500 people who live within that one mile evacuation zone.   

[mike_belben]

im sorry to hear that and i hope everyone comes out alive.  was it accident or arson?  


now more than ever farmers need to know about the "haney test" .. a soil sample that credits organic matter and nitrogen already present so that you arent buying N you dont truly need like conventional tests.  savings of 30-70% are pretty common. 

my adventures in microscopic scale regenerative agriculture experiments are in the soil health thread, trying to continually grow in the same dirt without any purchased inputs by adding organic carbon, microbial diversity and cover crops at all times. 


the way things are going a famine is getting possible. when youre thirsty its too late to dig a well.  get your gardens in folks. 

[Don P]

I sure hope the rain is cooling it off, but I guess that is all heading for the Yadkin one way or the other.

[snobdds]

I see people buying a lot manure spreaders a lot more in the future. 

I have a ranch, but my neighbor runs his cattle and and does the haying.  He dosen't even know if it makes sense to hay this year, between fertilizer and weed kill.  

He might just do one cutting this year and use it to feed his cows.  There is no having two cuttings and selling one off for profit. 

[SawyerTed]

Chicken litter and cow manure prices are going up.  At least for me, the farmer leasing our farm has agreed to let me have enough cow manure for my garden.  

[Southside]

The price of crap is going up everywhere.  :D

[SawyerTed]

Can't let crap go for nothing! :D

[mike_belben]

Coincidentially i just learned that the average adult is carrying around approximately 5lbs of bacteria in and on themselves, and that crap is 30% bacteria by dry weight.  

Its not the crap that your garden needs.  Its the live bacteria. 

[Southside]

Mike you get a job with one of those "Bio Solids" companies or something?  :D

[mike_belben]

No but i have manually raked the gravels out of a septic pumper truck, and ive welded fittings into them.

Not my favorite but i havent found a filthy task thats beneath me yet. 

Im immune to covid though so theres that.  

[chevytaHOE5674]

Cost of fertilizer has priced itself out of many cattle farmers pocket books for this year. I'm holding onto every bit of last years hay, and will make what I can this year. If prices stay up I will thin the herd to match the available hay next fall.

[newoodguy78]

What are you hearing for prices out your way @chevytaHOE5674? Here it has more than doubled since last year. 
Any access to chicken manure and the ability to spread it? Don't have first hand experience on hay ground but talked to multiple hay growers that really like it. 
I hope no one gets hurt in this fire. 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Last I checked 19-19-19 was 1400 a ton delivered to my yard. That was a couple weeks back. 

No chicken or turkey litter within a few hundred miles that isn't already spoken for. 

[stavebuyer]

Trying to keep politics out of the answer; why the surge in fertilizer pricing? From $200 to $1000 a ton is much more than inflation dollars.

[newoodguy78]

Simply because they can is the best I can come up with. 

[customsawyer]

I have next to no knowledge about what fertilizer is needed for different crops. Could y'all not spread some sawdust on your fields with a manure spreader? I know it won't help this year but it should start helping next year. If you got it going in a rotation every year would it help or hurt?

[SawyerTed]

Apparently the natural gas prices have caused some increase, Hurricane Ida impacted Gulf Coast fertilizer plants, the cost of trucking, the polar freeze last year in Texas and the Covid shutdowns have all created the price increases. Couple that with the costs of transportation, shortages of drivers and so on. 

Add in that homeowners and others wanted green grass in their yards as they quarantined so demand is up for fertilizer.  

There has been no word on what caused the Weaver fire.  Fire fighters got back in yesterday to fight the fire.  Apparently, the rain has helped extinguish some of the fire.  The other thing, I suspect, is that disposal of the toxic waste of fertilizers and other chemicals in that plant is going to be a herculean task so fire fighters decided that letting much of it burn was safer than the clean up (not to mention the dangers of explosion). 

DonP mentioned the Yadkin River and the runoff from the plant.  Officials have already put out advisories about the small streams where runoff is traveling - "Do not fish, swim, touch the water in certain streams."

Thankfully there have been no reports of injuries or deaths due to the fire so far.  The evacuation zone has been decreased to 1/8 mile radius.  

[Southside]

Jake, the answer is it depends. Sawdust will tie up nitrogen and hurt the immediate corn crop. Composted, eventually it adds valuable organic matter, helping our clay soils, but it would take a shift in thinking, crop rotation, etc. FWIW my unsold shavings, sawdust, and chips get composted and spread onto our ground and it has helped tremendously. 

[Hilltop366]

My grandfather who had a small dairy / veg farm (1937 to 1970) would bust a gut laughing if he could see the people lined up at the store to buy dirt, crap and water!

[newoodguy78]

Customsawyer southside is spot on with his explanation in my opinion. The other thing I would add is the shear volume you would need on large amount of acres would be incredible, potentially making it cost and time prohibitive. 
Once it's composted down to the point that it's turning dark brown almost black is when I've seen the fastest results from it. The organic matter content to me makes it the most appealing. 

[mike_belben]

I will 2nd or 3rd that composting the sawdust/woodchip will help it incorporate faster.  Stump grindings is much much quicker to become prime soil than wood chips so be on the lookout for grindings.  The dirt that comes with stump grinding  contains the bacteria and fungi components that digest the wood fiber.   mixing that fungally dominated forest dirt into the woody mass really accelerates the decomposition process.  


In a little experiment this fall i had much improved germination of a top sown winter covercrop mix that was covered in a light stump grinding layer just as winter set in harder than normal.  The mix was winter wheat, austrian winter pea, and clover, i think white and crimson.  

The portion that was covered doesnt seem to have suffered the frost kill or failure to root in hard dirt that the uncovered portion did.  Much seed germinated on the surface and died for failure to root. I guess i was too early for frost seed and too late for a fall establishment. 

Where i did spread grindings over the hand broadcasted seed, most of the material has become transparent.  The fine grindings melted in as the shoots emerged up between the coarser material that remains, which is settling in nicely.  I feel it was a success and will keep stump grindings and limb grindings separate from here out because of that.

 I think stump grindings can benefit within a year where wood chips take about 3.  I use straight woodchips as a soil armor and weed barrier all around garden plants that i dont fertilize whatsoever, nor have nitrogen issues.  

If the microbes are fed they will multiply.  The various microbial critters all have a C:N ratio that they must maintain by eating other critters.  This produces free nitrogen.   

Planting nitrogen fixers as companions to nitrogen consumers is also critical to get off of synthetic N without dropping yields.  For instance clover will only fix what it needs for nitrogen by itself, but if you put a non legume interseeded with it, that plant can signal its needs and the legume will fix larger nodules to feed the non legumes demand.  


If youve got monocrop seeded fields good luck getting off trucked N. Expect army worm and all that to have a feast removing that weakened system in the future.   I would strongly urge starting sooner than later with diversifying various legumes into the present stand.

[firefighter ontheside]

Ammonium nitrate itself doesn't burn.  It is an oxidizer that provides oxygen for fuels to burn.  That is why it is used with fuel oil to make the explosive ANFO.  Conditions have to be just right, or wrong if you will, for an explosion to happen.  In the beirut explosion a few years ago, ammonium nitrate was stored alongside fireworks.

[mike_belben]

Keep in mind that the more crop cycles cut off a ground from the time it was last forest, the greater the carbon depletion and the narrower the microbial diversity.  

This whole "itll tie up N" concern may have some truth but is extremely short sighted.  In the long run, failure to restock carbon simply ensures carbon depletion and ever decreasing yields until the economics threshold is crossed.   Rising fertilizer costs is gonna cause that threshold to come racing up in a lot of producers faces.  Stop worrying about nitrogen.  Its carbon and microbial life that will make or break you in the years ahead.

Microbial life digests and makes minerals plant soluble.  What are microbes after?  Carbohydrates.. Things containing carbon.  As carbon is depleted, microbes fail to thrive, soluble plant food disappears and soil dies. 

[farmfromkansas]

I would think putting that sawdust out in your corral for your cows to lay on would work to turn it into compost.  I do the same thing with straw and waste hay.  If it gets wet, and mixed with manure, then piled in the spring and with enough water, should deteriorate into some great compost.  Needs to be wet to make heat.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Composting, sawdust, wood chips, stump grinding, leaves, lawn clippings, etc is great on a small scale. The sheer volume and cost to do anything for say 500 or 1000 acres of crop ground is more than is available and feasible to most people.

On large scales of hay and crop ground some sort of fertilizer is needed, and more often than not chemical fertilizers are all that is available in the quantities needed.