The leading U.S. phosphate producer said Monday that it would reduce its domestic production over surging prices for sulfuric acid, a critical input, further denting the administration’s push to lower fertilizer prices and grow domestic supplies.
The move also imperils global supplies of the crucial crop nutrient. With China restricting phosphate fertilizer exports at least through August, Mosaic President and CEO Bruce Bodine said on the company’s quarterly earnings call Monday that he doubted global phosphate production would meet demand this year.
“To put it simply, there is not going to be enough phosphate to meet global demand,” Bodine warned.
Mosaic manufactures phosphate across four U.S. facilities, including a Florida plant near Lithia, which had recently seen its production capacity expanded. The company will cut production by approximately half at the Faustina facility in Louisiana, which makes 1.4 million tons annually, and at the Bartow facility in Florida, capable of producing 2 million tons.
U.S. industries source more than 80% of their sulfur domestically, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and Mosaic gets the bulk of its sulfuric acid, which makes up as much as 52% of finished monoammonium phosphate product, from domestic producers.
But the Middle East is a major global player, accounting for around half of all global seaborne sulfur exports. Accordingly, supply chain disruptions have driven sulfur prices up.
“We're reviewing our 2026 global production plan for phosphates and taking initial steps to curtail production,” Bodine said on the call.
The company had hoped to produce over 7 million tons in 2026, but will temporarily reduce output until market volatility in the sulfuric acid market has subsided. Mosaic is also scaling back additional fertilizer production in Brazil.
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“These are temporary matters that can be quickly unwound,” Bodine stressed. “We're prepared to restart operations quickly when conditions improve.” But he also noted that if the economic climate does not improve, the company is ready to curtail production further.
“We have more options that we are looking at and will execute on for further production curtailment,” he said. “We don't feel good about the margins that we have in this business to be a reliable supplier of what the world needs. So, these are the difficult decisions that we are looking at day to day and watching what happens in the Middle East.”
The announcement comes just weeks after the company said it would idle two Brazilian facilities, curtailing production by around 1 million tons a year.
Mosaic’s temporary curtailment of U.S. production is a blow to the Trump administration's efforts to increase production volumes. In recent comments to reporters, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins predicted that domestic phosphate production could jump over 200% in the coming years.
Industry representatives were already skeptical that the U.S. could hit those growth volumes, given the rapidly depleting quality and quantity of phosphate reserves.
David Delaney, CEO at fertilizer producer Itafos, told Agri-Pulse last week that many U.S. phosphate reserves are set to expire in the next decade or so.
“The ability to expand U.S. production is difficult,” Delaney said. Where global phosphate production is growing, Delaney added, is in countries with long-term access to phosphate ore, like Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. imports from Morocco are still subject to countervailing duties, and Morocco’s state-run producer OCP is not active in the U.S. market.
“Everything else around the world is pretty small increments,” Delaney said.
“The ability to expand phosphate production – number one – you have to have a long-term ore supply; number two, it's very expensive,” Delaney added. “I don't honestly see any phosphate expansion in the United States for the foreseeable future.”
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