More than 1,600 industry representatives gathered in San Antonio, Texas, on July 17-21 for the 2021 Southwestern Fertilizer Conference (SWFC). The annual event was one of first major industry gathering to take place since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year’s conference, scheduled for mid-July in Denver, Colo., was cancelled in May 2020 during the initial surge in COVID cases (GM May 29, 2020).
Executive Director Pat Miller said the addition of spouses pushed this year’s total attendance to 1,735, making it the fourth largest SWFC ever in spite of the absence of many international attendees due to concerns about border crossings amid the current spike in Delta variant cases. There were also reports that some U.S. companies withdrew their attendance at the last minute in response to new COVID cases among employees.
Few of those concerns seemed to be on the minds of this year’s mostly maskless attendees, however, as evening receptions and a scheduled breakfast and luncheon on July 20 were all well attended. Several sources said the main topics of conversation at the event were the recently announced UAN fill programs (GM July 16, p. 7) and the June 30 petition by CF Industries for countervailing duty investigations on UAN imports from Russia and Trinidad (GM July 2, p. 1).
The sold-out July 20 breakfast session featured a panel discussion on the future direction of the fertilizer industry, and included Corey Rosenbusch, CEO of The Fertilizer Institute; Tim McArdle, Board Director of Brandt; Geraldo Mattioli, Senior Vice President of Yara North America; and Simplot corporate grower Wade H. Condrey.
This year’s conference also honored inductees into the Fertilizer Hall of Fame for both 2020 and 2021. For 2020, these included R.L. Moore of Intrepid Potash and J.R. Simplot of J.R. Simplot Co. For 2021, the inductees were Jim Poole of Poole Chemical, Joe Eddleman of American Plant Food Corp., and Billy Barton of Bonus Crop Fertilizer.