We had two fertilizer shocks this past week.

First, we were told that we could not get any Monopotassium Phosphate coming out of China because of a 135 percent tariff that China has imposed. It’s not surprising that with so many people to feed, they need the fertilizer material themselves.

I should have guessed that and stocked up when I saw the press release from Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan last month. That’s the largest fertilizer company in the world, and they announced that China did not get the full amount of potassium that they needed. They only got one million tons.

Potassium and Phosphorous prices are rising faster that any of us had imagined. It turns out that we can get fertilizer. But the price has doubled.

Then we were visited by a sales manager from Yara, one of the largest nitrogen distributors in the world.

He said there is a shortage of nitrogen manufacturing plants compared to demand and so the price is going through the roof. He said to grab it if you can get it, because no one can be assured that there will be a continuous, unbroken source of supply. It will be like this for at least three years, he said, which is the time required to bring a new fertilizer production plant on line.

I tried to protest that Hawai‘i is very vulnerable, sitting here in the middle of the Pacific. The reality of it is that no one cares!

I wrote to Dr. Steiner, Dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, in order to inform him of this. His response: “This is happening faster than I thought it would!” My exact thoughts, too.

The world is changing faster than we expect.