🚀 Fertilizer Soars / 🐟 A Fishy Biz / 🚜. Tesla-esque Tractors

Happy Friday!

Today's newsletter is dedicated to the great state of Nebraska. The Cornhusker State is proclaiming tomorrow as ‘Meat on the Menu’ Day - a celebration of the state’s farm and ranch families and its $12 billion meat industry.

It’s also a sliiight jab at neighboring Colorado’s ‘Meat Out’ Day. Regardless...man, do we love a good ribeye.

The Friday Rundown:

Fertilizer Prices' Mission to the Moon
Something Is Fishy About the Seafood Industry
Monarch Tractor Gets a Supercharge

P.S. Next Tuesday's partner *surprise* is a can't miss. Keep your eyes on those inboxes, folks.

Talk to a U.S. row crop farmer today and you’re bound to hear stories about rocketship rides.

But they won’t be talking about Elon Musk heading to Mars.

Skyrocketing fertilizer prices are front and center as producers execute their spring fertility plans.

Phosphate prices in the U.S. are nearing levels not seen since 2012. And anhydrous ammonia prices have almost doubled since last fall, topping $600 per ton in some areas.

The Liftoff: Boosted by higher crop prices and mild weather, farmers spent extra cash on fertilizer applications in the fall, burning through much of the inventory retailers had on hand. Throw in production disruptions from the arctic blast in February and suppliers have been left with one plan: strap fertilizer prices to the nearest starship and send them skyward in hopes of slowing demand.

And current global dynamics are adding extra rocket fuel.

Shuttered phosphate imports from Morocco and Russia plus China’s energy problems and slowing output haven’t helped.

To Infinity and Beyond? Forecasts moving forward are a bit mixed, but most agree the higher prices are likely to stick around for most of 2021. Mother Nature is primed for an early planting season which would mean continued pressure on supply and no production window to catch up.

→ Cargill taps first female CFO. The 156-year-old commodity king has tapped former General Electric CFO Jamie Miller to take the top finance spot this summer.

→ Tyson’s Fixer-Upper. The meat giant is spending $55 million to convert an old prepared foods plant in Columbia, South Carolina, into a case-ready beef and pork plant with operations to begin in May.

→ This supply chain is bananas. After the November hurricanes in Honduras and Guatemala, 15-20% of U.S.-bound bananas were lost, shifting supplier’s focus to source from Costa Rica, Columbia, and Ecuador.

→ Japan gets beef-triggered. U.S. beef imported to Japan will see tariffs increase from 25.8% to 38.5% as rising trade volume has triggered a safeguard written into the U.S.-Japan Trade Agreement.

→ FBN sure is busy. On the heels of multiple new launches, Farmers Business Network will also make available 17 new biological products for U.S.-based producers on its FBN Direct platform.

→ Another big China corn purchase. The USDA reported a corn purchase of 45.3 million bushels worth $251 million from China as the Asian nation marches towards a record-buying year.

→ Trade Master Tai. With heavy ag industry support, nominee Katherine Tai was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to her post as the new U.S. Trade Representative.

To say the commercial fish industry has something fishy going on might be an understatement...

Seafood fraud on a global scale: Reports from The Guardian showed 36% of restaurants, fishmongers, and supermarkets they studied across 30 countries show mislabeling of seafood products.

Of the countries included, the United States was the third-worst, with 38% of seafood mislabeled—behind only the United Kingdom and Canada (both with a soaring 55% mislabeling rate).

Hook, line, and stinkers: Many instances of seafood fraud are an attempt to sell cheaper cuts or less desirable seafood species at a higher price by marking it as a superior product.

For example, in Germany, 48% of the so-cod king scallops were actually a less popular type of scallops. And in Italy, where shark fillets are a thing you actually pay for, there’s a 45% fakeout rate.

Transparen-sea: DNA barcoding could make a huge difference in the transparency of identifying who’s who among the water world. However, without much regulation or enforcement in DNA sampling, mislabeling is still coming up for air.

And get this... In Canada, 20% of the imported seafood tested was already mislabeled upon arrival. The mislabeling spiked to 27% at wholesale and a startling 40% at retail.

Even more fishy: The fish laundering issue. There’s good money in illegally caught fish, and a 2020 study showed there’s not quite so many fish in the sea thanks to unreported catches. Between 8 to 14 million tons of fish are caught illegally every year. In terms of weight, “that’s like 15 to 20 million cows being stolen” annually.

Across the country, leading ag retailers see the writing on the wall:

Doing business digitally is table stakes.

And that’s where AgVend makes all the difference.

Take it from this AgVend Partner Retailer…

“In 3-5 years, this is what everyone is going to be doing and what everyone is going to expect. I am glad that we are doing it now and staying ahead of the curve.”

AgVend-built Grower Portals provide retailers with the ability to centralize access to information and meet their producers where, when, and how they choose to do business.

The integrated mobile app and web platform seamlessly works with existing systems to enable:

Marketing communications tools to stay connected with customers.
Digital ordering to drive efficiency for your business and growers.
Cloud data storage to keep data accessible and secure.

Save time. Grow sales. Serve customers.

Learn more about AgVend today.

Monarch Tractors just got a supercharge with its recent $20 million Series A round.

The international fundraising spree gives the four-year-old electric tractor startup a boost.

And it wasn’t just the Tesla lovers of the world getting in on the electrification investing excitement.

Global tractor makers, including CNH Industrial and India’s VST Tiller Tractors, got in on the action, placing bets that the future of electrification for agriculture equipment will come sooner rather than later.

Coming in at a cool retail price of $50,000, Monarch Tractors have a peak horsepower of 70 with a 2,200-pound lift capacity and can run for up to 10 hours with a full charge.

Data icing on the electrification cake: The tractor fleet also serves as a data collector and insights provider. Monarch hopes to drive revenue-generating data decisions with their innovative equipment like real-time alerts and field monitoring capabilities.

Labor saver: Oh, and that whole ‘self-driving' thing. The ‘driver optional’ feature lets an operator manage a five to seven tractor fleet remotely. Plus, in an era where ag labor can be hard to find, it lessens the burden of a skeleton crew on the farm, saving time and allowing more value-add work to be done.

Monarch’s future: With pre-orders rolling in, the company will build a micro-assembly line in their hometown, Livermore, California. A ‘pilot series’ of tractors will head to large vineyard farmers in California, Oregon, and Washington.