Conclusion
On 25 April this site wrote that phosphate fertilizer would become unobtainable in Japan. Three months of facts later, a more useful sorting than a scorecard is available: what turned out better than expected, what turned out worse, and what is still undecided.
The headline first. On the better side: Morocco's recovery, the signs of a Chinese restart, and the resilience of Japan's procurement. On the worse side: nitrogen, sulfur, and potash as collateral. And the two variables that decide the spring season — China's domestic balance and Morocco's product mix — are still in motion.
The constraint has not disappeared. It is moving, and changing shape.
Better Than Expected
Morocco recovered. OCP pulled maintenance forward as sulfur costs spiked, cutting production by about 30% in the second quarter. But it returned to full output by the end of June. The method matters: it switched its product mix toward TSP (triple superphosphate), which uses far less sulfur and no ammonia — TSP now accounts for 65% of OCP Nutricrops' fertilizer volumes. The company is also building up domestic ammonia production and diversifying its sulfur suppliers. Its answer to the sulfur trap was not to wait but to change what it makes — the process escape route turned out to be real, and it has already been used.
Signs of a Chinese restart appeared. In July, Chinese domestic sulfur prices rebounded — on reported anticipation of phosphate export quotas. A producer with no intention of exporting has no reason to buy expensive sulfur; this is a signal in money, not in statements. The market expects the existing quotas — roughly 1.5 million tonnes of MAP and 2 million of DAP — to be used up between late July and August, and CRU forecasts China's 2026 phosphate exports at 5.6 million tonnes, slightly up on the year. And for urea, the restart has already happened: June-August quotas of 1.5-1.6 million tonnes were communicated directly to producers (with no official announcement), and exports are reported moving under a price floor of $660 a tonne FOB. The design protects the domestic market while capturing only the high prices — and August's phosphate decision is likely to take the same shape.
Japan's procurement held. Under the economic-security stockpile, potassium chloride has reached its three-month target and phosphate ammonium stands at 2.4 months. Imports are diversified to Morocco (21%) and Israel (7%), and Zen-Noh procures with China's January-April restrictions priced in as a pattern. The result: autumn phosphate settled at +4.5-4.9%, and no shelf has gone empty.
Policy moved too. Phosphorus recovery from sewage sludge accelerated — Yokohama's demonstration plant was completed in March, and the infrastructure ministry announced expanded support in April. Faster than the April assessment assumed.
One caution. Much of this column is price data. Prices face backwards — the autumn prices set in May are the prices of material secured earlier — and adjustment happens in quantity before it happens in price (production actually stopped at Egypt's EFIC and Brazil's Mosaic on sulfur procurement). Do not read quiet prices as evidence of supply.
Worse Than Expected
Nitrogen — the largest deterioration, outside the forecast's field of view. Qatar suspended urea, ammonia and sulfur production together (the damage to Ras Laffan will take years to repair), and Iran halted ammonia. In Russia, strikes continue on the Azot plants that make nitrogen fertilizer and nitric acid. International prices: urea +22.7% and ammonia +18.2% in April alone; Zen-Noh's imported urea +14.5%; domestic urea up from ¥64,500 a tonne in January 2024 to ¥93,100 in March 2026. The World Bank sees 2026 urea nearly 60% higher on average.
One lesson is buried here. The nutrient that got hit was the one that had diversified successfully. Urea's China dependence fell from 27% to 3%; Malaysia now supplies 74%. It did not help, because urea is made from natural gas and its price is set by Middle Eastern gas. Diversification meant changing the resource, not the counterparty.
Sulfur — the pathway as expected, the level beyond it. Middle East sulfur was $815-820 a tonne at the end of May, against a normal $50-150 — five to eight times. On top of Hormuz came Russia's export ban (after the strike on Astrakhan, which alone accounts for about 60% of Russian sulfur) and China's throttling of sulfuric acid exports (4.6 million tonnes down to roughly 1.2 million).
Potash — collateral. With no direct Hormuz exposure, potassium chloride still rose 7.3% and potassium sulfate 7.8% — more than phosphate. The channels: other nutrients' costs squeezing overall affordability, and the Russia-Belarus structure behind roughly 40% of world potash exports.
Still Undecided
First — China's domestic balance. This is the one that matters most. The August decision will be made not on Japan, and not on the world market, but on China's own supply and demand. The stated purpose of the halt was domestic supply and price stability — domestic MAP had climbed about 30%, to roughly 3,600 yuan a tonne, by May 2025. Five variables to watch: whether domestic prices have settled; autumn planting demand in August-September; competition from LFP battery phosphate (global shipments forecast at 5.8 million tonnes in 2026 — in China, phosphorus is also a strategic battery material); sulfuric acid costs; and disasters. The rains that struck southern, central and eastern China from 4 July (typhoon remnants combined with a cold vortex) had killed more than 70 people by the 9th and breached dams, with crop lodging and damaged agricultural facilities reported in southern Shandong and northern Jiangsu. Disasters cut almost entirely one way against resumption: replanting and topdressing raise domestic demand, the political weight of food security grows, and supply risk lands on the southwestern phosphate-mining belt and on power (in 2022, Sichuan's drought forced electricity rationing on chemical plants). And there is precedent — the export inspections that began in October 2021 came in the autumn after July's Henan floods and an energy crisis. A summer of disasters tends to become an autumn of restrictions. Though with the price-floor mechanism now in place, the likelier form is smaller quotas and a higher floor rather than a full re-closure. The leading indicator is not the announcement but the Chinese sulfur price — producers buy feedstock before policy is published. If July's rebound holds, expect resumption; if it fades, suspect extension.
Second — Morocco's product mix. Full output is back, but its content has shifted toward TSP. What Japan has bought from Morocco is phosphate ammonium — MAP/DAP, which carries nitrogen. TSP is a familiar product in Japan (double superphosphate), so substitution works — but the nitrogen has to be sourced separately: solving phosphate converts, in part, into more nitrogen demand. The constraint moves here too. Whether shipments to Japan regain their old composition depends on OCP's ammonia build-out and sulfur diversification.
Third — the spring ordering, and the exchange rate. Spring pricing (November-May supply) is set around November. International urea has already fallen back to nearly half its April peak — India's June tender drew oversubscribed bids around $445 a tonne against roughly $890 in April. The autumn +14.5% was set in the expensive window, so spring nitrogen has room to fall — though the Gulf structure remains (36% of world urea exports, years of repair at Ras Laffan) and levels stay above normal. Phosphate swings on China. A weak yen adds to every column.
What Has Not Changed
The shape of the dependence has not moved. 72% of phosphate ammonium still comes from China. Urea's feedstock is still Middle Eastern gas. What carried these three months was stockpiles, diversification, and an expiry date on China's measure — buffers, all of them, not a resolution of the dependence.
Nor has the long-run structure moved: the triple cost of declining ore grades (cadmium removal, excess sulfuric acid, radioactive waste); peak phosphorus around 2033 on several models; the fact that only 1-2% of applied phosphate is taken up while the rest binds into the soil; and the biology by which mycorrhizal fungi can mobilise what is bound. The case for changing how we farm rests on the structure, not on a crisis date.
On process escape routes, the general form is worth recording. OCP's TSP shift reduces sulfur and ammonia, but the upstream — rock and sulfuric acid — is unchanged. The nitrophosphate (Odda) route, which needs no sulfuric acid, re-ties phosphate to ammonia — the identical resource as nitrogen — and the Russian Azot plants that hold that equipment keep being struck, because nitric acid is also a feedstock for explosives. An escape route does not remove the constraint. It moves it. The one move on the farm side that works whichever way this falls is reducing dependence on purchased fertilizer itself — legume rotation, green manure, compost, and soil microbes.
What to Watch
China. The quota announcement (MOFCOM/NDRC) — and ahead of it, the domestic sulfur price. Whether July's rebound holds.
Morocco. OCP's product mix (the TSP share) and whether phosphate ammonium shipments to Japan recover; progress on its ammonia build-out and sulfur diversification.
November. Zen-Noh's spring pricing — the ordering of nitrogen and phosphate.
Autumn (September-November). Actual supply and demand; whether shortages or allocation appear.
Whichever way it falls, the result will be written here.
Related
- Blog Phosphate Fertilizer Will Become Unobtainable in Japan — the forecast whose progress this piece tracks. 25 April 2026
- Phosphorus and Farming Chapter 1: The Supply Constraint on Phosphate Fertilizer — the three supply routes in detail
- Phosphorus and Farming Chapter 5: Soil Microbes as Strategy — legacy phosphorus and mycorrhizae; the structural case
- Phosphorus and Farming Chapter 9: Lessons from Cuba — what happened in a country where supply really did stop
References
- JA Zen-Noh, autumn 2026 fertilizer pricing (15 May 2026) — https://www.zennoh.or.jp/press/release/2026/109288.html
- Morocco's OCP to resume full output, boosts low-sulphur fertilisers (Reuters, June 2026) — https://www.tradingview.com/news/reuters.com,2026:newsml_L8N42P0W2:0-morocco-s-ocp-to-resume-full-output-boosts-low-sulphur-fertilisers/
- Chinese sulfur prices rebound in July on anticipation of phosphate export quotas (S&P Global, 18 July 2026) — https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/fertilizers/071825-chinese-sulfur-prices-rebound-in-july-on-anticipation-of-phosphate-export-quotas
- Record Sulfur Prices Push Global Phosphate Fertilizers Into a Cost Squeeze (May 2026) — https://www.ihumate.com/media/articles/sulfur-price-shock-phosphate-fertilizer-may-2026
- Vapor Lock: The Global Sulfur Supply Crisis 2026 — https://stellarix.com/insights/blogs/global-sulfur-supply-crisis/
- Drones Strike Largest Chemical Plant Nevinnomyssk Azot in Southern Russia — https://militarnyi.com/en/news/drones-chemical-plant-nevinnomyssk-azot/
- China reopens urea exports with $660pt price floor (Profercy) — https://www.profercy.com/insights/china-reopens-urea-exports-with-660pt-price-floor
- China Briefing 9 July 2026: Guangxi floods (Carbon Brief) — https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-briefing-9-july-2026-guangxi-floods-beautiful-china-plan-new-eu-china-mechanism
- India issues 1.7mt urea tender ahead of monsoon sowing (Fertilizer Daily, 28 May 2026) — https://www.fertilizerdaily.com/20260528-india-issues-1-7mt-urea-tender-ahead-of-monsoon-sowing-as-domestic-production-shortfall-deepens/
- MAFF, "The Situation Surrounding Fertilizer" (April 2026) — import sources and stockpile figures