The White House issued an executive order to boost domestic production of a slate of minerals – including potash, most of which is imported now. One industry analyst thinks the efforts are misplaced.
In the executive order issued Thursday evening, the president directed departments and agencies to work with the newly created National Energy Dominance Council led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to identify mining projects for expedited permitting, gather industry feedback on bottlenecks, identify sites on federal land that may be suitable for mining and prioritize those projects over others.
President Donald Trump will also use the Defense Production Act, which allows the executive to direct businesses to expand production of products needed for national defense, to spur domestic potash and other critical mineral production.
The U.S. imports more than 90% of the potash used annually, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, with Canada providing the vast majority of those imports. Lengthy waits for permits and long lead times getting mines up and running is holding domestic industry back, Ed Thomas, vice president of government affairs at The Fertilizer Institute, told Agri-Pulse.
The new executive order, Thomas said, could “put into place the mechanisms to make these permits and make these processes much more palatable and easy to get across the finish line.”
One project that could benefit from any streamlining to the permitting process is located in Michigan’s Osceola County. The $1.2 billion salt and potash mining facility is awaiting several permits before it can build on its 302 acre plot, according to the Michigan Farm Bureau.
New Mexico and South Dakota are also home to potash reserves that could be tapped to increase domestic production, analysts told Agri-Pulse.
Any effort to expand domestic production, Thomas argued, is “money well spent.” Canada, which provides more than 80% of U.S. potash imports, has faced port and rail strikes in recent years that have caused unease among U.S. fertilizer users, Thomas said.
“These are real supply shocks, and they happen to happen right at planting season, or right before planting season,” Thomas said.
Part of the concern, Thomas added, is that the other major global potash suppliers beyond Canada are adversarial countries. Russia controls almost 20% of annual global production, China and Belarus also have around 15% each, according to USGS.
If a supply shock disrupts Canadian supply, Thomas argued, it would send U.S. consumers searching for alternate supplies, potentially handing foreign adversaries the power to cripple the U.S. food supply.
Thomas also hopes that the inclusion of potash in Trump’s executive order will incite USGS to add the rock to the list of critical minerals it maintains. USGS-designated critical minerals receive increased research funding and streamlined permitting procedures, among other benefits.
Potash was included in USGS’s list in 2018, during the first Trump administration, but did not feature four years later in 2022.
Josh Linville, vice president of the fertilizer department at StoneX, told Agri-Pulse, however, that efforts to strengthen domestic fertilizer production should focus more on phosphate than potash.
In the long-term, Linville said, the U.S. is at greater risk of potash oversupply than undersupply.
“Our biggest global producer and exporter in the world is literally just to the north of us. They produce 21 million plus tons,” Linville said. Global supplies are already adequate, and there are more potash projects scheduled to come online, he sad.
Supplies of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers, on the other hand, are more constrained, Linville argued. The U.S. has significant domestic reserves in Florida and North Carolina, he added, but environmental concerns have stymied industry expansion.
Domestic supply accounts for almost 90% of U.S. phosphate use, according to USGS. But China is a major player in global phosphate supply chains, supplying almost half of all global phosphate production.
In addition to boosting long-term resiliency, Linville argued that a push to expand domestic phosphate supplies would also unlock greater cost savings for farmers.
“Potash prices are extremely well valued, versus grains, versus historicals,” Linville said. Meanwhile, phosphate prices are way above historical averages because Chinese exports have plummeted.
“If there’s something we were going to look at and say, ‘Hey, there's something we need to kind of look and expand mining operations and do more research,’ it's the phosphate market,” Linville said.
