
But CF Industries has been plagued by manufacturing plant shutdowns. As Free West Media explains:
In Louisiana, is CF Industries’ largest ammonia factory in the world, but it was closed down for safety reasons the day before [hurricane] Ida struck, but could not resume production after it had passed due to the power outage.
Fertilizer factories have recently also begun to close down their operations due to the high costs of natural gas, which is used in production.
A couple of examples are two factories in the UK, one in Billingham and one in Cheshire, which closed in mid-September. The two plants account for no less than around 45 percent of domestic demand. Industry insiders have pointed out how they found it strange that these were owned by CF Industries.
Instead of compensating for delays due to the hurricane, CF chose to close two more factories two weeks later.
The same thing has happened in many European countries with “too high natural gas prices”. Austrian fertilizer producer Borealis AG and German SKW Piesteritz, which is Germany’s largest producer of ammonia have scaled down production by 20 percent. The German company said in a statement that “the level that has now been reached no longer enables economically sound production, so we have to take this step”.
As Bloomberg.com reports, it is no longer economically feasible to manufacture fertilizer due to high energy costs. (Emphasis added)
CF Industries Holdings Inc. said Wednesday it’s halting operations at its Billingham and Ince manufacturing complexes due to high natural gas prices, with no estimate for when production will resume. European gas and power futures tumbled Thursday on signs energy-intensive industries are curbing consumption.
The crisis could have severe economic consequences. Soaring prices are exposing the risk of power outages this winter, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Blackouts would likely send energy prices even higher, compounding concerns about inflation and adding to the rising costs businesses are already shouldering for raw materials.
For CF, shutting down these plants, which largely produce ammonium nitrate, will cause the company to lose some production volume, according to Alexis Maxwell, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. The bigger potential impact will likely be on global pricing for fertilizer as concerns grow that other producers will follow suit, she said.
Fertilizer prices are already high, and that’s adding to increasing expenses for farmers, who are paying more for everything from land and seeds to equipment. The higher costs of production may mean even more food inflation is on the way.
“We wouldn’t be surprised to see more nitrogen and chemicals production across Europe idled in the coming days until gas prices moderate,” Joel Jackson, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a report.
The official CF Industries press release on all this is found at this link, which states:
CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CF), a leading global manufacturer of hydrogen and nitrogen products, today announced that it is halting operations at both its Billingham and Ince, UK, manufacturing complexes due to high natural gas prices. The Company does not have an estimate for when production will resume at the facilities.
For the record, we are not attributing anything nefarious to CF Industries. The company should be celebrated, in fact, for providing the nutrients that contribute to feeding about half the world. CF Industries' website talks a lot about "green energy" and "environmental stewardship" and so on. This is today's necessary virtue signaling talk to appease left-wing lunatics who don't know where food comes from and who live in fairy tale delusions where energy is magically created out of nothing. All the "Green New Deal" lunatics have literally zero knowledge of physics, chemistry, agriculture, geophysics, atmospheric chemistry, and so on, which is why they are trying to destroy carbon dioxide, the single most important nutrient in phyotosynthesis that grows food crops. Given current technology, it is patently impossible to produce affordable ammonia without using fossil fuels, period. Affordable food comes from affordable energy, and when energy is no longer affordable, food simply cannot be produced in an affordable manner. That's straight up cause and effect. (The whole world is about to learn this lesson in 2022, it turns out...)
The fertilizer shortage is already so bad that in some areas, farmers can't even order fertility for their 2022 crops:
Hermann Greif, a farmer from the village of Pinzberg in the southern state of Bavaria, told AP that he was shocked when he discovered that he could not even order fertilizer for next year. “There is no product, no price, not even a contract. It is a situation we have never seen before,” said Greif. “If I do not give my crops the nutrition they need, the yield will be much lower. It’s that simple.”
The Ice Age Farmer is warning about the same situation, revealing that farmers are unable to acquire the supplies they need to grow food (including fertilizer):
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