Farmers are facing increased input costs as they seed their crops this spring, an obstacle that is affecting how they approach operations and that will likely mean higher food prices down the road.
Professor Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, says fertilizer costs are way up.
“These critical inputs for farmers are on average about $1,500 US a ton, which is five times what it was twelve months ago. Farmers need fertilizers to produce crops, but the market is controlled by a handful of very avaricious multinationals who supply-manage their products to artificially boost fertilizer prices. Some of them are in Canada,” Charlebois said by email.
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