Vice President JD Vance stood in North Platte, Nebraska and announced a $1.3 billion investment in domestic fertilizer manufacturing, promising it would help drive down costs for farmers who have watched fertilizer prices spike over the past year. The announcement, made during a rally on Thursday, centers on TalusAg, a company building two manufacturing facilities in the state as part of a much larger national push.
According to Nebraska Public Media, TalusAg will build 20 modular ammonia manufacturing units across 11 locations in seven states, with two of those units landing in Nebraska. One of the Nebraska sites has been confirmed as Superior, though the company has not disclosed the location of the second facility. TalusAg CEO Hiro Iwanaga said the company plans to deploy the manufacturing plants over the next two years.
Deploying all 20 units nationwide is expected to cost $270 million, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture providing nearly $100 million in financing, the outlet reported. The KETV report on the rally confirmed Vance's framing that the $1.3 billion investment would aid fertilizer manufacturing broadly across Nebraska. Separately, the Nebraska Examiner reported that Nebraska is one of seven states set to receive $99.8 million in proposed USDA funding toward a $270.2 million TalusAg project.
What Vance Promised Farmers
Vance told the North Platte crowd the investment would deliver lower-cost, American-made fertilizer to 32,000 farmers working more than 4 million acres nationwide, per KLIN. But the station also noted a significant gap in the announcement: Vance did not identify the second company that would share in the funding, nor did he specify how the $1.3 billion would be divided between projects. He also did not clarify whether the money represents government grants, loans, private investment, or some combination, the station reported.
TalusAg describes its product as “green ammonia” made from electricity, water and nitrogen, intended for use by fertilizer manufacturers, according to Nebraska Public Media's reporting. The company's systems are expected to produce approximately 130,000 tons of anhydrous ammonia annually, per Brownfield Ag News. That outlet also reported the USDA's broader estimate that the fertilizer investments could produce a short-term 4.5% decrease in nitrogen fertilizer prices and a 5% decrease in potash prices.
Why Nebraska Farmers Are Watching Closely
The timing matters for Nebraska producers. Nitrogen fertilizer prices in the state spiked sharply this spring, with urea jumping nearly 20% to 30% in a single week, from roughly $800 per ton to $1,000 per ton, according to data from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's CropWatch program. Those costs add up: U.S. farmers spent $33.8 billion on fertilizer in 2024 alone, about 7% of total farm expenditures, according to reporting from Investigate Midwest.
Much of that cost pressure traces back to America's reliance on foreign fertilizer. The same Investigate Midwest analysis found the U.S. imported about 6.1 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer between April 2025 and March 2026, with Russia and Canada supplying more than half of that total. Potassium fertilizer imports ran even higher, at about 8.7 million tons over the same period, with nearly nine out of every 10 tons coming from Canada. The outlet also traced today's elevated prices back to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which triggered a global energy and fertilizer crisis.
A Mixed Track Record on Nebraska Fertilizer Projects
Nebraska's fertilizer-manufacturing ambitions haven't always panned out. Nebraska Public Media's reporting noted that Monolith abandoned a planned green-ammonia fertilizer project near Lincoln after President Donald Trump canceled its $1 billion federal loan; the company is now planning to build a data center on the site instead. TalusAg's own track record is limited — its only previously announced project before Thursday was a plant in Minnesota built in partnership with Central Farm Services, the outlet reported.
The company's broader ambitions extend beyond Nebraska. In Iowa, TalusAg's plan calls for spending $50 million to build modular ammonia facilities in Eagle Grove and Manning, according to a Yahoo News report. A related Talus Renewable facility near Boone, Iowa began production in 2025 and can already produce up to 20 tons of green ammonia per day, that report noted.
Nationally, the USDA selected eight fertilizer projects representing more than $1.34 billion in total proposed investment and roughly $573 million in proposed USDA funding, according to the Oklahoma Farm Report. Those selected projects are expected to support approximately 1.08 million tons of annual domestic fertilizer production capacity once up and running, and the USDA estimates they could eventually reduce nitrogen fertilizer prices by 4.4% and potash prices by 5.3%.
