NEWBURYPORT— Nearly everything it takes to run a farm has gone up over the past year.
Gas. Utilities. Labor. And now, even the price of fertilizer is spiking.
Farmers are feeling the pinch and preparing to raise prices, though the actual increase hasn't been determined yet.
"I think the price of fertilizer has doubled from what it was three years ago," said Robbie Bartlett of Bartlett Farm in Salisbury. "This year it went up quite a bit and will push prices up."
Bartlett, the tenth generation to run Bartlett Farms, has planted sweet corn and vegetables for several years. But this year he says it will be hard to keep prices low as the price of fertilizer increases.
According to the Fertilizer Institute, a Washington D.C.-based trade association that represents the represents the fertilizer industry, there are a number of reasons prices have risen. Thanks to factors as diverse as the ongoing natural gas crisis, criminal uses of fertilizer to create methamphetamine, and rising worldwide demand, fertilizer prices will make growing and eating vegetables will be expensive this summer.
"The prices of fertilizer in April were the highest on record," said Estelle Grasset, public affairs specialist for the institute. She said the institute focuses primarily on educating the public and government of why prices are so high to begin with. "The bottom line is the farmer is not just competing against his neighbor anymore but also the farmer in India and China as the demand is high worldwide."
Commodity prices of fertilizer are influenced heavily by supply and demand and by high gas prices and increased demand for fertilizer and nitrogen products worldwide, the U.S. is suffering.
"Higher energy prices, a significant demand for transportation and even weather-related events have caused shipping and distribution costs to rise," the Fertilizer Institute says in its monthly pamphlet.
Since January 2000 the price farmers pay for fertilizer has increased 228 percent on average nationwide.
"World demand for fertilizer is up," Bartlett said. "Fertilizer is being used to create corn for ethanol, the demand goes up for fuel and everything else goes up."
Bartlett notes the main problem is the competition between corn being grown for food and corn being grown for fuel.
"I just do the sweet corn vegetables, hay and firewood but its all going up because it takes fuel," Bartlett said.
Bartlett buys fertilizer by the ton from Kimball Farm in Haverhill, averaging about 25 tons a growing season. Kimball Farm sells most of the fertilizer used at local farms but did not return calls seeking comment.
Randy Millen of Woodman Farm on Low Street said he fears when people come into his farm stand they will be turned away by the prices, but rising costs have left Millen no choice.
"Everything is 80 percent higher and went up," Millen said, noting he buys 20 to 22 tons of fertilizer from Crop Production Services in Connecticut. "I can't even begin to tell you how high prices will be and with the weather, you never know."
Owner Bill Colby, who has operated the 360-acre Colby Farm on Scottland Road in Newbury since the 1950s, says he, like all farmers, is feeling the strain.
"Last year it cost around $300 a ton for fertilizer, this year it is $640 a ton," Colby said. "Last season it cost $12,000 by the end of this season it will cost $24,000."
Colby grows vegetables and raises pigs at the Newbury farm, and has other growing areas in Newburyport, Salisbury and West Newbury.
But with the price of fertilizer so high, as well as an increase in animal feed prices, the Colby Farm has a bigger problem than most. Colby says the additional increase in feed prices is also hurting him, as the cost is going up from $700 a load to about $1,300 .
"Our biggest customers are horse people and I don't know of one person who has gotten rid of a horse yet, though I do know some who are not taking on more horses because of the cost of feed," Colby said, noting his prices of hay will have to increase this year as well as everything else.
"Between myself and my wife and my son and his wife, the four of us decided it would be business as usual," Colby said. "You can't not use fertilizer and alternatives such as manure would cost money to handle."
But business as usual will come with a price tag which Colby says the customer will soon see.
"We have to raise prices or we won't survive."
