Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has written a letter to FTC Chairman William E. Kovacic and joined Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., in calling upon USDA chief Ed Schafer also to initiate an investigation.

The FTC is responsible for investigation and enforcement of U.S. anti-trust and consumer protection law. Its Bureau of Competition deals specifically with issues of free-market competition.

One of the main issues is the fact that the fertilizer industry is far more concentrated than it used to be. There used to be as many as eight different sources available to North Dakota landscape professionals. That’s no longer true.

“It’s devolved into just a couple of very large companies,” Dorgan says.

This could indicate antitrust violations, but getting at the truth would require the special investigators and resources of the FTC.

The senator says there is a “shroud” that prevents easy examination of what’s happening in fertilizer pricing.

“Is this simply big companies having the muscle to price in their own manner without competition? The fewer companies you have, the less competition you have. That’s just a fact of life,” he says.

There is virtually no pricing transparency, he adds, which could demonstrate the fertilizer industry’s upstream and downstream costs and therefore their pricing profit levels.

He stresses that the problem has nothing to do with fertilizer retailers in North Dakota.

“They’re not at fault here,” he says. “They’re having to pay huge wholesale prices, and when they call and get quotes – they can’t even get good quotes, necessarily – and they’ve only got a couple sources from which to purchase.”