Anchorage Daily News

FAIRBANKS -- A team of University of Alaska Fairbanks agriculture experts are looking for ways to offset spiking fertilizer prices.

Costs have gone up as much as 400 percent and it's putting fiscal stress on agriculture producers.

Milan Shipka, an associate director with the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, says these costs, plus rising energy prices, could drive some producers out of business.

"That's a real possibility," Shipka said. "It's bad."

Shipka said price hikes are linked to the 2007 closure of Agrium in Kenai. Agrium manufactured urea, a fertilizer used throughout the state.

This forces producers to order fertilizer from Outside.

Ruby and Scott Hollembaek raise hay to feed herds of elk and bison at their Delta Junction game ranch.

Hollembaek said hay does not grow well enough to justify the work and expense that goes into cutting, baling and wrapping the feed, without the help of fertilizer.

"Fertilizer will pay for itself five to seven times over," he said. "But if you don't use fertilizer, you're not getting a crop. It's not hardly worth spending the time and energy cutting it."

So, researchers are searching for alternatives to offset the costs. This could include looking to organic rather than commercial fertilizers.

Shipka said his team of researchers is pursuing Alaska-specific research to ease the costs.

The team features researchers from the university's School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Science, the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, outreach specialists and Cooperative Extension Service agents.

One option is an alternative nitrogen source, perhaps fish meal waste.

"We don't want a producer to cut fertilizer to the point where it doesn't do any good to put it on, and we don't want producers to stop fertilizing," Shipka said. "They'll pay for that in ways like weedy fields. There is no blanket answer, and there is no magic bullet."

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