Washington-The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) on May 16 discussed the impact of the natural gas crisis on the U.S. fertilizer industry before the U.S. Senate Republican Conference at a hearing titled More American Energy: Lowering the Cost of Energy and Balancing the Family Budget. Terra Industries Inc. President and TFI Chairman Michael Bennett testified on behalf of TFI. Bennett told the group that “in seven of the last eight years since 2000, global consumption of grain and oilseeds has exceeded production. If the world’s farmers stopped growing food today, we would only have enough grains in the world’s storage bins to feed the world’s population for 55 days.” He told the senators that fertilizer use currently represents 40 percent of the world’s food production and will have to continue to be a part of the solution toward resolving the food crisis. He emphasized that escalating domestic natural gas prices had caused 26 U.S. nitrogen plants to shut down since 2000. “Currently, only 30 nitrogen plants are operating in the U.S. and 55 percent of the U.S. farmer’s nitrogen fertilizer is imported. In less than 10 years, we went from being basically self-sufficient in nitrogen fertilizer supply to importing more than half of our needs.” He said America’s food security ?Çô and by extension, its national security ?Çô will be jeopardized if action is not taken to address the country’s natural gas crisis. He said TFI supports the newly introduced “Domestic Energy Production Act (S.2958),” which the Senate Republican leadership recently introduced. He added that the fertilizer industry particularly supports provisions that would allow states to petition to lift federal moratoriums on drilling off their shores and the bill’s efforts to promote important coal-to-liquids technologies and energy production initiatives.
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