About 7,000 miles from the southern coast of Iran, farmers in the Hudson Valley, are in planting season and feeling the pinch as roughly a third of the world’s fertilizer travels through the Strait of Hormuz.
Amanda Powers, communications director from the New York Farm Bureau, said fertilizer prices have skyrocketed since last year – from roughly $400 a ton to $580 a ton, on average. Anhydrous ammonia is now over $1,000 a ton.
And Powers said diesel prices in New York have risen about $2 dollars per gallon since last year.
“All of these factors put together are going to make profitable farming very difficult,” Powers said.
Farmers were already struggling and made less than 6 cents per dollar in 2024 according to a recent study from the US Department of Agriculture.
Powers says all of this means people will have to pay more for groceries.
“If you have fewer crops being planted, it doesn't take rocket science to figure out that the prices are going to be higher in the grocery store,” said Powers.
Powers said after rising costs, finding immigrants workers is also a top issue for New York farmers. She said domestic workers are not responding to marketing campaigns to take farm jobs.
“They get zero, or maybe a handful of applications, and oftentimes those people don't last because it's hard work,” Power said. “It's quite a myth out there to think that, ‘well we can just fill those jobs with Americans’.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 42% of farm workers in the U.S. were undocumented in 2022. USA Housing Information estimates that the Trump administration has deported more than half a million people since the president returned to office in January 2025.
Powers said the farm bureau supports a year-round H-2A program to hire foreign workers during labor shortages.
“Any farmer here in New York who has immigrant labor will tell you that they are absolutely essential to running their farm. They cannot survive without them,” Powers said.
Powers said the government needs to help, “We need as many laws and regulations in place that give farmers relief.
