America’s Food System Is Being Squeezed — And Almost No One Is Paying Attention

The Warning From America’s Farmers Strip away the headlines and listen closely: the people who grow the food are telling you they can’t afford to grow enough of it. Roughly 70% of U.S. farmers now say they will not be able to purchase all the fertilizer they need this year. That’s not a minor inconvenience—it’s a direct hit to output. Fertilizer isn’t optional. It’s the difference between a full yield and a shortfall that ripples through the entire economy. Farmers aren’t speculators or pundits. They deal in physical reality—soil, inputs, and margins. When they say they’re cutting back, it means less production is already baked into the system. And once that decision is made, there’s no reversing it mid-season. Fertilizer:…