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The impact will be most severe in terms of fertilizer production.  Right now the US imports quite a bit of anhydrous ammonia from Eastern Ukraine/Russia, and that tends to increase as natural gas prices do. Get ready for another food price shock when American corn prices shoot up based on increasing fertilizer costs.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Mon Mar 17th, 2014 at 08:41:21 AM EST
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A sane reaction to increased fertilizer prices would be a reduction or elimination of requirements for ethanol additives to gasoline. This would at least match drops in feed in tariffs for wind and solar electricity and give the appearance of balance and a coherent 'no subsidies' approach, which, in itself, would be a novelty.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Mar 17th, 2014 at 11:36:59 AM EST
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Eek! But then how do you expect the corn-planting industry to get its subsidies?
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Mar 17th, 2014 at 12:36:50 PM EST
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There are hard limits to how high ammonia can go - It is the most widely synthesized chemical on earth, and natural gas is most emphatically not a necessary ingredient. There are producers right now making money producing it via the electrolysis pathway in places with cheap electricity. I think this is due to a cartel in ammonia production, because the level of profit that implies for people producing it the lazy way is hard to explain without a cartel limiting production - but it does mean that if ammonia goes much higher a lot of people are going to start turning electricity water and atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer.
by Thomas on Wed Mar 19th, 2014 at 04:47:41 PM EST
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There's a past series of diaries on ET about this, by SacredCowTipper, see this one for example.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Mar 20th, 2014 at 03:36:08 AM EST
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