Adam Wilmoth column: Indiana project may help reduce cost of fertilizer

At the same time, agriculture leaders are growing concerned about the supply and price of fertilizer, which is made largely from natural gas.

More than half of the country's fertilizer — or 10.8 million tons — was imported last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The price of natural gas in other parts of the world is trading for two to five times more than it is in the United States.

“While we have been concentrating on weaning ourselves from foreign oil — which is a good goal — we have become dependent on foreign fertilizer necessary to produce our food,” Terry Detrick, president of American Farmers and Ranchers Insurance, said at the International Energy Policy Conference in Oklahoma City on Thursday.

“When natural gas is 70 to 90 percent of the cost of producing nitrogen fertilizer, it alarms me that we are importing fertilizer at an all-time high price,” he said.

Price could be just the beginning of the problems.