Agricultural Chemical Manufacturers NAICS 3253

Sep 18, 2025 - Praise for Second MAHA Report

• Industry pushback regarding the impact of pesticides on children’s health in the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s first report released in May, resulted in the removal of one of the only mentions of reducing pesticide use in the final draft issued in September, Civil Eats reports. In the months between the two reports, agriculture industry groups criticized the mention of pesticide use as harmful and lobbied the White House for changes. Rather than restricting pesticide and toxic chemical use or taking a more precautionary approach to safety evaluations, the second report merely tasks the Environmental Protection Agency with working to reform the approval process for chemical and biologic products to protect against weeds, pests and disease. Critics of the final report argue it abandons major reforms and the policy recommendations amount to a public relations campaign with few effectual changes, according to CE.
• The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) is urging the Trump administration to provide a strategic carveout for Canadian fertilizers – including designating potash and phosphate as critical minerals – to exempt them from import tariffs. Trump imposed 25% duties on most Canadian products on March 4th before announcing a one-month reprieve on some goods, including fertilizers, two days later. The US imported nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizer products valued at more than $10 billion, more than half of which came from Canada, in 2023. Canada supplies 85% of the potash fertilizer and nearly 10% of their nitrogen fertilizer used by US growers, according to TFI. Potash prices have already risen nearly 20% this year ahead of US tariffs and phosphate prices are poised to surge more on retaliatory Canadian tariffs, Reuters reports. Higher prices for fertilizer – most farmers’ biggest input cost – would likely be passed along to growers.

• Facing tighter budgets, US farmers are trading down to generic chemicals to treat their crops, in a blow to the big agricultural chemical manufacturers, Reuters reports. Falling crop prices and rising input costs are causing US farmers to cut back on their spring planting budgets, sending shocks throughout the US agriculture sector, including companies that make pesticides and fungicides. “It’s like if you grew up eating Fruity Pebbles and now you go to Dollar General and get Fruity Bites,” Illinois grain grower Jeff O’Connor told Reuters. The pullback in spending is impacting ag chemicals companies including Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva, which are also facing increasing generic competition. The expiration of over two dozen active ingredient patents in recent years is driving a boom in off-patent use, with which now accounts for about 80% of the agrichemical market share, Rabobank agricultural analysts told Reuters.
• Producer prices for pesticide, fertilizer, and other agricultural chemical manufacturers rose 9.2% in August compared to a year ago, after inching up 0.5% in the previous August-versus-August annual comparison, according to the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Industry producer prices are rebounding after falling sharply from their highs in 2022, when Russia’s war in Ukraine triggered global disruptions in the fertilizer market. Employment by makers of agricultural chemicals shrank 0.3% year over year in July, while the average industry wage increased 2.4% YoY in August to $31.49 per hour, down $0.40 from its high in July, BLS data show.