US fertilizer imports helping fund Russian war effort, CF Industries says

By Rod Nickel

May 2 (Reuters) - U.S. agriculture companies have been brisk importers of Russian fertilizer since the 2022 Ukraine invasion, a practice that is unwittingly helping fund Russia's war against Ukraine, U.S. producer CF Industries said on Thursday.

The U.S. does not impose sanctions directly on Russian fertilizer, which is important to global food supplies and prices. On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued hundreds of fresh sanctions on other Russian targets over the war.

"What's kind of shocking is there's been all of this focus on not funding the Russian war machine and not buying Russian gas," CF's CEO Tony Will said on a quarterly earnings call. "And yet, the U.S. is arms wide open to take urea and UAN (urea ammonium nitrate) coming out of Russia, which is effectively just natural gas that's been converted (into fertilizer).

"So the U.S. is funding the very war effort over there that on the one hand it’s condemning."

A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CF, based in Illinois, is one of the world's biggest nitrogen fertilizer producers and competes against Russian imports. Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas and the U.S. has imposed sanctions on a project owned by Russia's largest producer of liquefied natural gas.

CF does not import Russian fertilizer, company spokesperson Chris Close said.

Will did not say whether CF is calling on the U.S. to sanction Russian fertilizer.

Wholesale producers typically sell fertilizer to separate retail companies that sell it directly to farmers, or through their own retail stores. (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; editing by Jonathan Oatis)