Russia is a major, major exporter across all of the major fertilizers,” says Linville. “Urea, they account for 14% of the global export total. UAN has been anywhere from 25% to 31% the last couple of years. Phosphate 10%. They are almost 20% of the global operating potash capacity of the entire world. They're a big deal. Losing Russian exports is a very big deal. I don't care where you are in the earth, it matters to you.”
However, even with Russia pulling off the world market, it still doesn’t create a “worst-case scenario” for fertilizer availability and prices. Linville says China holds the card for that scenario as Russia and China combined account for 40% to 45% of total global phosphate production.
“We are still working with the idea that China is going to come back to the export market in June of this year. If China steps out and says what you're doing to Russia is like an attack on us, we are going to attack we're going to take over Taiwan, we start to do the same thing to China, the rest of the world has done to Russia, then it gets worse than where we're at today,” says Linville.
