KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The crisis in Ukraine is expected to bring several ripple effects to global markets, and farmers in the Midwest could be paying the price with fuel and fertilizer prices on the rise.
“We know that with the prices that have gone up in the past couple of years since the pandemic and now with more crisis, all fueled by shortages and climate change, there’s just a ‘what's coming here’ feeling among everyone,” Alicia Ellingsworth, co-founder and executive director at KC Farm School, said.
The KC Farm School said the situation impacts farmers differently. They will feel the impacts of the overseas crisis with an increase in fuel costs.
The schools is a local, organic urban farm that gives other local farmers a space to grow. While they try to keep everything local, part of their soil mix requires ingredients like peat moss and perlite.
These substances come from Canada, so an increase in fuel costs will lead an increase in price to buy the goods.
“They're not coming from that part of the world, but with fuel prices rising, supplies are impacted,” Ellingsworth explained. “We are only one of many growers who are trying to help teach others and grow food for the community and everyone is struggling right now.”
Before the pandemic, Ellingsworth said the farm was paying $11 for a bag of peat moss. Now they are paying $40 for the same bag, and prices continue to go up.
“We build the whole season on this oil mix that we use here and we mix our own,” Ellingsworth said. “Prices for perlite, for instance, has more than doubled since last year but then it's also the scarcity, some other ingredients that we use are no longer available.”
Currently, the farm is dealing with a tough early springs growing season.
Spinach should be starting to sprout on their field, but 2022 was the first time they were unable to get seeds to germinate.
Plus, on top of inflation and fuel costs, the farm said seeds have been hard to come by with suppliers placing them
KC Farm School doesn’t want to pass on costs to consumers and are looking at different options for crops, since harvesting has been tough.
Last week, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis released an article that said oil and gas prices have surged.
The article indicated that's causing fertilizer prices to go up. They also predicted it could lead American farmers to need to cut back on fertilizer use this year.
