Any disruption in fertilizer supply chains — whether due to price, availability, or logistics — directly impacts Mexican agriculture. The bet on Fertimex has not yielded the expected results in scale or time. A new threat is forming now, with an accumulation of pressures on global fertilizer prices. It is a real threat to the well-being of millions of families. Public policy should be designing responses now: diversification of suppliers, strategic input reserves, targeted subsidies for small producers, and a serious conversation about what food sovereignty means when the country depends on the world to fertilize its own fields. We hope work is already underway on these fronts. If fertilizers are too expensive or unavailable, the rational response is to plant less or substitute crops. This raises freight and insurance costs, which in turn increase agricultural input costs in importing countries. The second factor is oil itself: geopolitical uncertainty has driven the upward trend, with a multiplier effect on the entire petrochemical chain. The third, and perhaps most underestimated, factor is the fragmentation of global logistics. The pandemic left scars on supply chains that have not healed. Fertilizers, being bulky and low-value per ton, are particularly vulnerable to freight costs. When does this translate into food shortages? There are chains of economic impacts that are not seen until it is too late to act. National production remains marginal compared to the sector's real needs, leaving the country in a structural vulnerability. The distributive effect is especially concerning. Small producers—the majority of the country's agricultural units—are the least able to absorb increases in input costs. They have no financial coverage, their bargaining power is minimal, and their margins are tight. Today's scenario shares several of these structural conditions, with the difference that there is no single and obvious trigger, but an accumulation of diffuse pressures that makes a coordinated response more difficult. For Mexico, the implications are of primary importance. The country imports about 70% of the fertilizers it uses, mainly from Russia, China, and the United States. Their price is structurally tied to that of energy. The impact on production takes between six and eighteen months to reach the market. The response lies in agricultural times, which are inflexible. When oil prices rise, gas prices usually rise too, and with them, the costs of ammonia, urea, and ammonium nitrate that feed the world's fields. Since the beginning of the war, urea and ammonia, the basis for the production of many fertilizers, have experienced increases of 15 to 30 percent. The increase derives from the confluence of several factors that are straining this chain from multiple ends at the same time. The first is the crisis in the Middle East. When fertilizing a hectare becomes more expensive, many simply stop doing it, and production falls. The predictable result, if the pressures are sustained for the next two or three agricultural cycles, is a reduction in the domestic supply of basic staples that would add to imported food inflation. For an economy where the basic basket weighs significantly in the budget of low-income households, this is no minor issue. Food inflation has become a threat to political stability in dozens of countries. The farmer who plants in the spring needs his inputs months in advance. There is a container shortage, port congestion, and a shipping industry that continues to adjust capacity. But perhaps it should. Nitrogen fertilizers—the most widely used in world agriculture—are produced from natural gas. But when it arrives, the impact is large. The world saw a preview between 2021 and 2022, when the post-pandemic period and the war in Ukraine generated a food crisis that hit sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia particularly hard. Wheat, corn, and rice prices skyrocketed to historical levels. Attacks on ships in the Red Sea have forced shipping lines to go around the African continent, adding weeks of travel and millions in operational costs per voyage. It is not a topic that dominates the headlines.
