The Japan Times67%
Fertilizer prices rise in Japan due to Strait of Hormuz squeeze 34%
By Eric Johnston50%
6/14/2026, 11:46:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Appeal to Authority, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 32.2% saturation with 148 hits. Analysis detected 879 faulty-reasoning hits from 460 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 42.2% and a BS Rank of 34% (14,443 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 66.00% of the article peer group.
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created food security concerns in Japan as farmers are being charged more for imported fertilizer products.
While severe domestic supply chain bottlenecks have hit naphtha supply chains, similiar shortage fears have yet to become a major issue in the fertilizer industry, experts say.
But warnings about an international fertilizer shortage have been issued and the government is stockpiling fertilizer products and making moves to diversify its import sources.
Urea, ammonium phosphate, and potassium chloride — raw materials for chemical fertilizers — are almost entirely imported in Japan.
Between July 2024 and June 2025, Malaysia provided 74% of Japan’s urea; China accounted for 72% of the country’s supply of ammonium phosphate, and Canada was the source of 78% of its potassium chloride.
Urea is a low-cost nitrogen fertilizer while ammonium phosphate fertilizer is a nitrogen-and-phosphorus compound suitable for many types of soil and crops.
Potassium chloride fertilizer is used on soil that has insufficient quantities of potassium.
Last month, the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, also known as Zen-Noh, announced that, beginning this month, it would raise the wholesale prices of fertilizers supplied to its prefectural agricultural cooperatives for the autumn 2026 fertilizer season spanning June to October.
The price for urea is going up by 14.5%, ammonium phosphate by 4.9%, and potassium chloride by 7.3% compared with the autumn 2025 fertilizer season.
In explaining its reasons for the price increases, Zen-Noh said that since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, it has become extremely difficult to forecast prices for fertilizer raw materials.
Prices for imported urea rose rapidly due to the volatile situation in the Middle East, resulting in Zen-Noh passing on the increases.
They add to price increments for overseas raw materials since the end of 2025, which resulted from a weakening of the yen.
A shortage of naphtha, caused by the Iran war, has created panic in industries such as construction, creating bottlenecks as firms on the supply chain upstream hoard materials as a hedge against future uncertainties about availability and price.
But although Japan relies heavily on imported raw materials for fertilizers as well, there are fundamental differences between their supply chain and that of naphtha.
“Unlike naphtha, fertilizer raw materials are rarely used for purposes other than fertilizer.
So competition among suppliers is unlikely.
Currently, the supply situation is not such that securing sufficient quantities is difficult enough to trigger competition,” says Miwa Kobari, a researcher at Norinchukin Research Institute, which studies economic and financial trends in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors.
In addition, she says, the number of players in the fertilizer supply chain is limited, and as fertilizers are very heavy and...
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