You see, if you plant, you lose money. If you don’t plant, you lose land if you don’t own it. And the USDA just confirmed it, the lowest wheat acreage in over 107 years of recorded data. This is already bad from the Iran fertilizer crisis, but it’s actually getting worse. And if you if you feel it, if you don’t feel it now, you’re going to feel it really soon. So let me break a little bit of this down. Tommy Salisbury Farms in Oklahoma. He leads the Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers and Ranchers program. He said it on record.

He said we are paying input prices of 2026. We’re getting crop prices of the 1970s and the 1980s. Lorenda Overman Farms in Northern, actually, sorry, North Carolina. Her fertilizer and nitrogen costs have jumped massively this season, about 56%. That means it’s 56% more expensive to grow her crops. The price that she’ll get for what she harvests hasn’t moved. These aren’t economics or economists, you know, reading charts. These are people standing in fields like this, you know, looking at the soil, looking at the cost and saying this doesn’t add up. Planting crops that they know will actually lose money because the alternative is not planting at all and possibly losing their land if they can’t keep making the payments or the rent payments, right? On March 31st, the USDA confirmed what farmers actually already knew.

The Perspective Plantings Report, based on surveys of nearly 74,000 farm operators, showed that all wheat planted in the country was about 43.8 million acres. This is the lowest level since records began in 1919. Again, 107 years of American agriculture. The country just recorded its lowest wheat planting in the entire history of the data. And if you’re a farmer, I would love it if you’d put down in the comments below what you’re experiencing right now so I can learn more about what’s going on. You see, people don’t realize that this report was captured way before the worst of the fertilizer spike hit because the survey was taken in the first two weeks of March, 2026.

The number that you’re looking at is actually the optimistic version. The June update is where we’re going to see the real damage from what happened in Iran and the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. You see, two items are at the front of this cascade, and I’m going to get to them. But first, you need to understand why the planting data is worse than what the report shows, all right? Who’s telling you that it’s fine when it isn’t and what the farmers themselves are doing right now? That tells you exactly where prices are heading, okay? So Josh Linville, the VP of Fertilizer at Stonex Group, posted the six-week damage report from the Hormuz closure on April 10th.

He said urea is up 49 percent. Liquid nitrogen is up 38 percent. I always pronounce it wrong. Andriethys ammonia is up 32 percent and gap is up 21 percent. Those are the four inputs, the fertilizer inputs, that determine whether a crop grows to full yield or comes in thin like what you’re seeing in this photo. Every one of them spiked after this survey was actually taken. USDA’s own break-even math tells you those numbers do a farmer’s decision for them, right? When corn costs five bucks a bushel to grow in 2026 between the seeds, fertilizer, the fuel, the land, the labor, right? But it only sells for $4.20 a bushel.

That doesn’t make sense. When soybeans cost $127 to produce and they’ll sell for a lot less to produce, it was like, I don’t remember the per acre, but they sell for a lot more. The government is pushing data showing American farmers are growing food below the cost of production. So what do they do? They dive into things like soybeans, right? The American Farm Bureau Federation surveyed farmers directly. Seventy percent of them said they can’t afford enough fertilizer this season. And again, look down below into the comments and see what the farmers are saying. It also showed that 19 percent of southern farmers actually preordered ahead of the spike when it comes to their fertilizer, right? Seventy eight percent of them say they can’t afford what they need, and 48 percent of Midwest farmers are in the exact same position.

So what are they doing? Well, they’re cutting wheat, the most nitrogen hungry grain, because the nitrogen costs are prohibited, prohibited, sorry, and they’re switching to soybeans. They’re cheaper to grow, lower fertilizer demand, and soybean acres are actually up 4 percent. But the more soybean acres doesn’t mean more food on the shelf. And AFDF economist Faith Pumm said this, when producers cannot afford full fertilizer application rates, they may reduce nutrient use or shift acreage decisions, both of which these increase the risk of lower yields. They’re planting more soybeans because it’s cheaper, not because the market needs them, and the soybeans are getting planted and receiving even thinner fertilizer.

So you get more acres, right, less nutrition per acre, and higher risk of a thin harvest on the wheat and corn that goes into the ground. So nitrogen is spread thinner, weaker plants, lower per acre yields, and more vulnerability to drought and pests. See, 57 percent of winter wheat acres are already under drought conditions, which is up from 37 percent at the same time last year. Three pressures are now compounding on the same crop at the exact same time, and the relief isn’t coming fast enough. Now, Linville at Stonex again says it takes 30 days to get a vessel of urea to load up in the Persian Gulf, sail it over here to the U.S., hit the U.S.

stores and or the shores, and then another three to four weeks to move that product from the stores to the interior, to the farmers. The window from spring application has closed pretty much. The straight could open any day now, but it’s too late. The fertilizer takes two months to reach the field. The planting calendar doesn’t wait for that. One more thing that the press has missed. Not only that, we’ve seen some record drought numbers for the first quarter of this year already. You see, the press keeps missing it. Another thing that they missed is the rate for this year’s planting report, which was 37.6, which is the lowest in the survey’s history.

Pro-farmer flagged it directly, saying fewer farmers answered than ever before. It is, you know, if the one is too stressed to fill out a government survey, they’re the ones cutting the most acres. The March numbers, the problems, you know, I believe that this June is going to be nuts. And I think that if you aren’t prepared for what’s coming, like buying extra food right now, like extra meat for your freezer, a little bit extra canned goods, not going crazy, but just doing something. I think you’re going to get hit on the backside of this inflation wave, because the sad thing is these government numbers are nowhere near reflecting what happened in Iran.

And that’s a big deal. These farmers, they’re describing a system breaking in real time. If you’re not ready for it, you’re going to be part of it. And that’s what I want to warn you about. Hopefully you got something out of this. Please, to all the farmers and ranchers, please let me know down below what you are seeing. Are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? What is the percentage of your fertilizer going up? What is happening with your planting? Thank you so much for watching. The Economic Ninja is out. [tr:trw].

See more of The Economic Ninja on their Public Channel and the MPN The Economic Ninja channel.