U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA) and U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) joined 66 fellow members of Congress in requesting that the U.S. Department of the Interior add phosphate — a critical fertilizer ingredient — to the department’s Draft 2025 Critical Minerals List to help safeguard America’s agricultural base and national security.
“Phosphate, like potash, is a crucial input for Iowa farmers and producers, helping to increase yields, strengthen crop resistance to disease, and retain nutrients in farm ground,” Rep. Feenstra said. “However, with China controlling 40 percent of global phosphate production and other nations leveraging export controls to limit U.S. phosphate purchases, it’s important that we take steps to lower input costs and ensure that agriculture has access to affordable phosphate.”
“Phosphate’s addition to the Critical Minerals List will help us increase domestic production and protect Iowa farmers from outsized dependence on foreign nations for phosphate.” added the congressman.
The bipartisan contingent of lawmakers requested that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum add phosphate to the department’s draft list, calling it indispensable to global food production and U.S. agriculture.
“It has no substitutes in farming, and disruptions in supply have immediate and far-reaching consequences for American producers, food prices, and national security,” the lawmakers wrote in a Sept. 23 letter sent to Burgum. “Farmers across the country are already experiencing the impacts of market volatility and supply pressures tied to phosphate availability.”
They also pointed out that they think the current U.S. Geological Survey methodology significantly underestimates the risks associated with phosphate, noting that the framework “appears to place too much emphasis on domestic geological abundance of phosphate rock, without fully accounting for the global supply chain realities,” according to their letter.
“Given phosphate’s central role in our economy and its clear vulnerability to supply disruptions, we strongly urge that it be immediately reexamined and added to the 2025 Critical Minerals List,” wrote Rep. Feenstra, Sen. Ernst, and their colleagues. “You have the authority to make this designation, and doing so would reflect both the essentiality of phosphate in American food production and the systemic risks our farmers face from market disruptions created by the concentrated foreign supply.”