Urea Slips 7.7% While DAP and Ammonia Climb as Record US Farm Payments Land
US urea fell 7.7% on the week to $730 a short ton even as UAN28 jumped 20.5%, DAP rose 24.2% and anhydrous ammonia gained 11.1%, a split that comes as USDA confirmed a record $13.8 billion of 2025 crop-year revenue and price safety-net payments.
The latest weekly US fertilizer survey shows urea at $730 a short ton, down $60.94 or 7.7% on the week, while potash eased 6.3% to $535.20 and ammonium sulphate slipped 1.1% to $574.12. Against that, the rest of the nitrogen and phosphate complex moved sharply higher: UAN 28% rose $102.00, or 20.5%, to $600.00, UAN 32% added 11.6% to $622.14, anhydrous ammonia gained 11.1% to $905.67, DAP climbed 24.2% to $961.83 and MAP was broadly flat, up 0.4% at $1,020.22. The divergence leaves growers facing very different input costs depending on which product and application window they are buying for.
The USDA separately announced that the Farm Service Agency's Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programmes will generate approximately $13.8 billion in gross payments to eligible producers for the 2025 crop year, a record for the revenue and price safety net. Payments of that size are themselves a price signal: they reflect a crop year in which realised revenue or national marketing-year average prices fell far enough below benchmark levels to trigger the largest safety-net outlay on record, and they give producers more balance-sheet room to commit to input purchases for the 2027 season.
Grain markets are simultaneously absorbing harvest pressure. Chicago wheat was stabilising above $7.40 a bushel on the December contract after the previous week's sharp decline, with US winter wheat planting 36% complete, while December corn was little changed at $4.9725 a bushel with harvest 23% done and rain delays slowing progress. November soybeans recovered modestly to above $12.80 a bushel with a quarter of the crop harvested, and soybean oil briefly tested $70 a pound, its highest since mid-September, before closing below that level. Corn export sales to Mexico of 129,540 tonnes and a 104,000 tonne soybean flash sale provided modest support.