This is Part One of the Industry Primers audio program on fertilizers, published by Latticework from MOI Global. It is the first of two audio programs that accompany the written primer on the fertilizer industry, and it is the story of the industry, told for a general audience. The account is built from documented scenes, with the people named, the dates given, and the participants quoted in their own words. It assumes no background in chemistry, farming or finance and explains its terms, from fixed nitrogen and superphosphate to a floor price and an export agency, as they arrive. This episode is public.
The program runs from the guano islands of Peru in the 1850s to the Strait of Hormuz in September 2026, and from Chile’s nitrate desert, Norway’s waterfalls and the Rhine to the Saskatchewan prairie, the Urals and a farmyard in Texas. Its people are chemists, among them Justus von Liebig, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch; the Chinese laborers who dug guano on the Chincha Islands; a Chilean captain who boarded an ironclad; the governors and premiers who set and defended the price of potash; and the farmers who asked in 2026 who sets the price of fertilizer. It follows how states and export agencies, from Saskatchewan’s floor price and quotas of 1970 to the Belarusian Potash Company, set the price of nutrients that the air and the rock hold in abundance.
Part One stands on its own. It tells how the industry took its present shape, from the natural deposits that states owned and fought over to the synthetic ammonia of 1913 and the potash mines of the prairie. The economics of the business, and the companies as investments, are the subject of Part Two and of the written primer. Where the program reaches the investigations and the farmers’ suits of 2026, it reports them as investigations and allegations, which the companies deny.
The program runs in fourteen sections:
The Air Takes Fire. On September 7, 1898 Sir William Crookes tells the British Association at Bristol that the world’s wheat depends on guano and Chilean saltpeter that may run out within decades, and prices nitrate made from the air on Niagara’s power at not more than £5 a ton, against £7 and 10 shillings for Chile’s.
Before the Plough. In 1840 Justus von Liebig prints a recipe for dissolving ground bones in sulfuric acid, John Bennet Lawes patents the process in 1842 and opens the world’s first commercial fertilizer factory at Deptford Creek in 1843, and that autumn wheat is sown on Broadbalk, where a control strip has received no fertilizer since.
Five Tons a Day. In 1853 George Washington Peck watches Chinese indentured laborers on the Chincha Islands dig and wheel 5 tons of guano each a day, and by Alexander Duffield’s count Peru sells 20 million tons at £12 to £13 a ton before it defaults on its foreign debt in 1876.
Without Firing a Gun. On February 14, 1879 Chilean troops occupy Antofagasta in a quarrel over a Bolivian tax of 10 cents a quintal on nitrate, the War of the Pacific gives Chile the nitrate province of Tarapacá in 1883, and John Thomas North, who bought Peru’s nitrate certificates at a reported 80 to 90 percent below face value, becomes the Nitrate King.
A Dinner on Friday the Thirteenth. Seated beside Kristian Birkeland at a dinner in Christiania on February 13, 1903, Sam Eyde finds the electric arc he wants, and Norsk Hydro is founded on December 2, 1905 with 7.5 million kroner of share capital, only 8 percent of it held by Norwegians.
Eighty Hours, Then They Burst. In 1909 Fritz Haber and Robert Le Rossignol make liquid ammonia on a bench apparatus at about 175 atmospheres, Carl Bosch’s first steel tubes burst after 80 hours, and BASF’s plant at Oppau, built for about 30,000 tons of ammonia a year, starts on September 9, 1913.
The Saltpeter Promise. Cut off from Chile by the British blockade, Germany takes Bosch’s pledge of September 1914 to make nitric acid from Oppau’s ammonia, and Leuna ships its first ammonia on April 27, 1917, while the United States spends about $80 million on two Alabama nitrate plants without a working copy of Haber’s synthesis.
Stones into Bread. Fritz Haber, who orchestrated the chlorine attack at Ypres on April 22, 1915, receives the Nobel Prize for the synthesis of ammonia on June 1, 1920, and on April 30, 1933 resigns rather than dismiss the Jewish members of his institute’s staff.
A Grim Enemy. On September 21, 1921 a silo holding about 4,500 tonnes of ammonium sulfate nitrate explodes at Oppau, killing 559 people on the official count, and in 1927 Norsk Hydro gives up its electric arc for a license to the German process, while from 1929 to 1932 the export price of Chile’s nitrate falls 84 percent.
The Governor Calls the Premier. After Canadian potash drives the American price from $22.26 a ton in February 1966 to $11.70 in February 1969, New Mexico’s governor calls Saskatchewan’s premier, and in 1970, under a floor price and quotas of 40 percent of capacity, the province’s producers sell 3 percent less potash and their revenue rises from $69 million to $116 million.
Under Our Wheat Fields. On November 19, 1975 Premier Allan Blakeney tells Saskatchewan’s legislature that the province will borrow to buy its potash mines, and in 2010 a takeover offer of about $40 billion for PotashCorp is refused, leaving a holder who kept the shares with Nutrien stock worth about 67 cents for each dollar offered, before dividends, in late September 2026.
Deadlock. On July 30, 2013 Uralkali leaves the Belarusian Potash Company, the export agency it shared with Belaruskali, and in the year that follows the World Bank’s potash price averages $344.8 a tonne, against $429.4 the year before; on August 26 Belarus detains Uralkali’s chief executive at Minsk airport.
Ninety-Six Percent. In August 2022 European gas averages $70.04 per million British thermal units against $8.79 in the United States, about $2,000 more in the cost of a tonne of ammonia made in Europe, and CF Industries runs its North American plants at about 96 percent of capacity that year while it closes its Ince plant in England.
One Ship. After Iran declares the Strait of Hormuz closed on March 2, 2026, urea averages $856.9 a tonne in April, 81.5 percent above February, and on September 20, 2026 the International Monetary Fund’s count shows one ship passing the strait, against an average of about 85 a day in 2025.
The program runs 1 hour 31 minutes (1:31:54). The written primer and its companion deck are on the Latticework Substack at the Industry Primer on fertilizers. Part Two, the deep dive for professional investors, is a separate episode, available to members of Latticework: Industry Primers Podcast: Fertilizers, Part Two: The Deep Dive.
This audio program is published by MOI Global for educational purposes only. It is not investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation, and no security mentioned herein is recommended for purchase or sale. The publisher and contributors may hold positions in securities discussed. Figures are believed accurate as of the dates stated but are not warranted; listeners should verify all data against primary sources before relying on it. Nothing herein constitutes legal, tax, or accounting advice.
Transcript
The transcript is available for download to members only.
