Category: Politics

KHARTOUM – Eritrean government presented Saturday an initiative to the Chairman of the Sovereign Council in Sudan aimed at ending the political strife in the neighbouring country.

Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan received, for the second time in six days, an Eritrean delegation including Foreign Minister Osman Saleh, and Presidential Adviser Yemane Gebreab.

The same delegation met Al-Burhan on April 11 to discuss the political situation in Sudan and expressed the Eritrean government’s solidarity with al-Burhan in his efforts to overcome the ongoing crisis.

According to a statement issued by the Sovereign Council following the meeting, the delegation handed al-Burhan a message from Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki.

“The delegation came bearing a vision that aims to bridge the views of the Sudanese parties to resolve the political crisis in the country,” further reads the statement.

The initiative was made out of Eritrea’s keenness and desire to establish security and stability in Sudan and the region, further said the Sovereign Council.

However, it did not elaborate on the Eritrean initiative.

Eritrea had hosted peace talks to end the conflict in eastern Sudan, and a peace agreement was signed that ended an armed rebellion by the East Front in October 2006.

Eastern Sudan is witnessing political and tribal turmoil due to the rejection of the Hadandawa tribe, one of the components of the Beja, for a peace agreement signed in 2020 with one of the Beja factions.

The UNITAMS, African Union and IGAD are preparing to launch an intra-Sudanese process dealing with the restoration of the civilian transitional government which had been dissolved by the military component in October 2021.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

Khartoum, April 17 (SUNA) – Member of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Gen. Shams-Eddin Kabbashi, has expressed appreciation for the stances of the State of Eritrea, led by President Isaias Afwerki, to address the current political crisis and bring together the views of all Sudanese parties.

This came when Kabbashi received at this office today, the visiting Eritrean delegation, which includes Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohamed and Eritrean President Adviser Yemane Gebreab.

The Member of the Transitional Sovereignty Council affirmed the strong relations linking Sudan and Eritrea, praising Eritrea’s supportive stances for Sudan in all regional and international forums.

Kabbashi welcomed all initiatives and efforts that contribute to strengthening security and stability in the country and addressing the current political crisis.

The meeting discussed the course of the relations between the two countries, and ways to support and develop them in all fields.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

Yemen borders with Saudi Arabia in the North, Oman to the North-East and shares maritime borders with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. Yemen is important for the flow of oil since it is located next to the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandab which control access to the Suez Canal. It has been in the news for the last four decades due to civil war, tribal feuds, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

In 1918, after the fall of the Ottomans, a Zaidi Kingdom was founded in North Yemen called the Mutawakkilib Kingdom with its capital at Taiz.

A Zaidi republican government was formed under Ali Akbar Saleh in 1978 who ruled Yemen for 33 years and united North and South Yemen in 1990. The Zaidis also started resistance against Saleh’s government in the 90s under Hussain al Houthi who also led an anti-US protest after the US’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. He was killed by Saleh’s forces in 2003 and his followers thereafter are known as Houthis. This killing led to insurgency. In 1978, Saleh took power in North Yemen.

In 2000, Saleh signed a border demarcation agreement with the Saudis. This was not well received by Houthis and a civil war started against Saleh. After the Arab spring there was a wide uprising against him and in 2011, he was replaced by Mansur al Hadi. In 2014, Houthis again joined hands with Saleh against Mansur and in 2015, Hadi fled to the Saudi Arab where he is running an exiled government. It was in 2015 that a Saudi led coalition intervened in Yemen after Houthis aligned themselves with Iran. Today parties to the crisis are the Houthis who are based in the North West and the Shababal Muminin, also referred to as Ansar Allah.

Between 2004 and 2010, the Houthis fought 6 wars against Yemen’s government and battled Saudi Arab in 2009-2010. Another part of the conflict involves Southern separatists who are also struggling for more rights and economic and political powers. In 2007, the Southern Movement started for greater autonomy. Southern Transactional Council (STC), who are against the Houthis but are struggling for independent South Yemen, remained independent from 1967 until unification in 1990. The Southern Resistance is reportedly supported and trained by the UAE. After Saudi involvement, the UAE pulled out its support due to an understanding.

The fourth party is the Saudi-led coalition which has enforced a blockade of Yemen’s port since 2016 and Sanaa airport is only open for UN and humanitarian cargo flights. It launched attacks in March 2015, when Houthis became stronger with Iranian support and training and inspiration from Hezbollah.

The Houthis were considered a threat to Saudi Arab and the Gulf States since Saudi Arab wants stability in its South and therefore its security is linked with that of Yemen’s. The Saudi-led coalition was prompted by the fear of Iranian expansion based on a sectarian war. Saudi Arab has deployed its troops along its border with Yemen however it mostly relies on air strikes against Houthi targets.

Another party to the conflict is Iran and the Saudi-led coalition accuses Iran and Hezbollah for helping Houthis to launch missile and drone strikes against Saudi and UAE targets. The Iranian support comes through the smuggling of components which are re-assembled later. The US is also party to the crisis; the Trump administration declared Houthis as a terrorist group and in 2019, passed a resolution after which it retracted support.

The Houthis are demanding the opening of the Sanaa airport which according to them still blocked by the coalition. With the Iranian support, the Houthis have challenged the Saudi led coalition. They are also now claiming that the south of Saudi Arabia including Jizan, Asir and Nayran historically belong to Yemen.

If the situation cannot be controlled, then there is a possibility of a sectarian revolution. The civil war and lawlessness could facilitate the terrorist attacks not only by AQAP but also by ISIS. The war could also stop the supply of world oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandab strait which controls access to the Suez Canal. This may lead to hike in oil prices across the globe if the supply routes are blocked or disturbed. Yemen has been wrecked by civil war since 2014 leading to the deaths of over 3 lac people. 20 million people don’t have access to health facilities and the country is facing the worst humanitarian crisis. The situation in Yemen is worsening after every passing day. There is a requirement for immediate intervention by the UN.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

Who doesn’t like taita in Eritrea!? Come on! Unless there is something fundamentally wrong with you, taita is, well let me put it this way. As the fictional character from Seinfeld, Jackie Chiles, once said referring to O’Henry Candy bar, it is delicious, scrumptious and outstanding! Taita is exactly that.

The first European who came across taita (the soft flimsy pancake made of taff or eragrostis Abyssinica and is considered Eritrea’s staple food) lying on the mesob (cone-shaped wickerwork used as table) must have thought it was a sponge. It looks like one with the difference, among others, that sponge is spherical while taita is round and flat.

And it is made of taff, a grass-like plant which is fed to mules in South Africa and is mostly left alone as a friendly weed in some parts of the world (with apology to taita lovers all over the world).

Injera is a generic name for bread. Taita is the pliable pancake-like with one thousand and one holes (like crushed Swiss cheese) testifying to its perfection. But Eritreans seem to use the word injera for taita on many occasions.

The Italians, who colonized Eritrea, never added taita to their menu.

Maybe they thought it could easily compete with their spaghetti. I don’t think that the British who succeeded the Italians took pains to even taste it. Those who did would in their aristocratic and plumy accent say: “It does taste like the Indian chapatti in some mysterious ways, I presume!” and they would add: “Could it be that the Indians have been trading with this poor people in the past?”

The Americans, more adventurous than their predecessors, ate it and liked it. Some were rushed to their army hospital only to be given last warning not to ingest indigenous foods again. By going native, they became poor insurance risk back in the USA.

Then the Ethiopians came. These were not strangers to taita. They were its co-inventors, only that they found our taita a little bit thicker and darker than was dictated by custom.

It needs a great deal of skill and nimble hands to bake taita. Those who thought of producing it in the past must have been our first alchemists. You knead the taff flour-based dough, leave it to ferment, take a sample from the fermented part, add water, boil it and pour it over the dough and wait. Many girls fail to pass the test. They either bake injera with no holes on it, or bake good ones that stick to the surface and refuse to come out of the overheated mogogo (traditional clay oven).

“If you fail again, you will never find a husband,” implores the mother.

“The one I marry will eat steak and pizza instead of taita and tsebhi (spicy meat stew),” retorts the naughty girl. She is wrong. I have heard that Eritreans who have lived abroad all their lives still go crazy about taita.

I am sure that only wives of feudal lords in the past could have had the time and energy to come up with such complex culinary formula.

While the serfs ate kitcha or gogo (bread so hard it breaks your jaw), the feudal chieftains relished their taita eaten with zigni and derho.

Kids in Eritrea have taita with sugar sprinkled all over for a 5 o’clock snack. Normally they spiced their taita with salt but given the opportunity they preferred the sweet sugar.

Thus, they were in some way co-inventors of the sweet and sour dish that is very much vaunted by the Chinese.

Taita+Taita=Hanza, used to say a math teacher jokingly, meaning that if you put one durra-based taita on top of another durra-based taita, you come up with a new kind of bread known as hanza. Children prefer it to taita, but it doesn’t taste good with stebhi due to its sugary flavor.

A new ingredient and a new addition to the menu. You take the taita fresh from the oven and lace it with butter and berbere paste. The end result is katagna. Only those with little cholesterol in their blood and with strong stomach lining should try it.

Baking takes almost from one to two hours depending on the quality of taita. Most of the time it happens that at the end of the baking, the dough is not enough for a full round taita (with the normal diameter). So you go for a little one. This is called ts’l’ka. It is given to children who until now have been gawking at the piles of taita.

The problem with taita is that it can easily get moldy if touched by hand. The most frightening sight for a woman is to see the taita she had baked two days ago going moldy on the third day.

What can you do with a moldy taita except throw it away? But some innovative women lay it on the ground to dry. Direct sunshine kills the mold, but the end result is a bone-dry taita, which is good only to be ground and to be used for a rainy day. This is known as korosho.

This type of food catches your eyes in airports going out of Eritrea and arriving in European or American towns.

“What is this?” once asked a customs officer at a Danish airport.

“It is our traditional food,” asserted the Eritrean.

He looked perplexed. If he suspected it for drugs, he could have used his sniffing dogs. But the dogs did not show any interest at all.

It is very difficult to explain taita to foreigners and to Europeans or Americans in particular. With most who taste it as invited guests, it is love at first sight. But there are those who wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

“I find it very sour and bland at the same time,”

“C’est deguelass! (It is disgusting)” barks a French man.

Some taita are yellowish, others brown or even black. They say the rich eat white injera, while the poor consume the black varieties. Fortunately, it has been scientifically proved that the darker varieties contain more iron than their white versions. Iron is good for health, and helps to brighten the black mood of menstruating women.

In the past, when dignitaries came to visit the country it was customary to serve them taita with tsebhi just to show them how much you respect your culture. But you had to notify them in advance so that they may decide to take the leap of faith as they arrive in the host country.

I have heard that Queen Elizabeth I liked it after tasting it at a luncheon given in Addis Ababa by the King.

Have you heard that an American guest invited to lunch was about to use our taita as a napkin? He was right away reprimanded for his insolence by the otherwise very kind and humble host. And then you have this crackpot who dared to ask whether it moved. I don’t know what he meant by that, for if it moved it was alive, and if it was alive it was not cooked, and his hosts would have been very kind enough to provide him with a spear to kill the moving beast.

But there are those who have positive tastes for anything under the sun. Their problem is that they don’t know how to go about eating it.

A Kenyan did the following before a pile of injera and a plate full of tsebhi; he took a spoon, scooped some tsebhi from the plate and slurped it. And then he turned to the injera, took a morsel and ate it. He used a spoon for tsebhi and his fingers for the taita. Was told to put an end to his funny way of eating the semi-national dish. He couldn’t care less.

If the cereal chosen to make taita happens to be mashela (durra) then the end result is a very soft and digestible taita which should be consumed on the same day. If you try to eat it the next day with shiro or hamli (vegetables), it crumbles in your hand. More of it will be falling to the ground than goes inside your mouth; the cohesive property of durra is very poor compared with that of taff.

Now listen to this: of the taita that doesn’t have holes or eyelets. It means that either it has not undergone enough fermentation or that something other than taff or mashela has been used in its making.

Nowadays, taita is being made using not taff or mashela, but rice and even wheat. The result is, more often than not, indigestion, heartburn and sour stomach.

Where did the name taita come from? I don’t know. But there are many places in the Middle East and Asia where injera-like pancakes are made. Chappatti in India and Tanur bread in Lebanon. Wherever it might have come, taita is here to stay.

And what’s more, the elderly love it to the point of worship. This for two reasons: they say it is our culture and our pride. But the real reason is that being soft and tender it can be easily chewed with their toothless gums even during the last days of their life on earth.

Disclaimer: This writer can’t make taita even to save his life!

Source: Ministry of Information Eritrea

Agency for Refugees and Returnees Affairs (ARRA) dismissed today the report disseminated by some media outlets about attack on Dabat refugee camp in North Gondar Zone of Amhara Regional State.

In an exclusive interview with ENA, Agency for Refugees and Returnees Affairs Director General Tesfahun Gobezay recalled that Eritrean refugees, who had been living peacefully in four camps in Tigray region before the conflict, were attacked repeatedly by the terrorist group TPLF.

To prevent attacks on Eritrean refugees, the government worked hard to ensure safety of the refugees by moving them to the temporary shelters built in Maitsebri and Dabat, he added.

According to him, the refugees near Dabat town have subsequently been hosted with love by the community.

The director general stressed that the reports disseminated by some international media outlets about attack on an Eritrean refugee camp in Dabat is incorrect and far from the truth.

The agency has filed complaint to the organization that gave the wrong information to BBC Amharic, which was later exaggerated by the Deutsche Welle ( DW) that reported the death of one person.

The incident occurred following group to group conflict among the refugees; and distorting this fact to mislead the international community is unacceptable, Tesfahun underlined.

Although details of the incident are under investigation, he said nobody was killed. Five people were injured and three of them were immediately treated and returned to the camp, while two are undergoing treatment.

Ethiopia is a country that has a reputation for accepting refugees, participating in joint projects, providing vital services and banking services.

At present, it is hosting more than 900,000 refugees from primarily South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, and other countries in 25 camps.

The country has ratified international treaties relating to refugees and makes integral part of the law of land and is party to the OAU convention governing the specific aspects of refugee problems in Africa.

Source: Ethiopia News agency

Former President Barack Obama “pivoted” towards Africa, his predecessor Donald Trump away from it, and current U.S. leader Joe Biden has had his hands full with the pandemic at home and now the war in Ukraine.

But in an address to lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week, the commander for U.S. forces in Africa pointed to China’s dominance in a region vital to America’s security and economic growth, and warned that Washington ignores Africa at its peril.

“China’s heavy investment in Africa as its ‘second continent,’ and heavy-handed pursuit of its ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, is fueling Chinese economic growth, outpacing the U.S., and allowing it to exploit opportunities to their benefit,” AFRICOM Commander General Stephen Townsend told the House Committee on Appropriations, echoing comments he made last month to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Townsend’s remarks come amid a burst of Chinese diplomacy with the continent. Foreign Minister Wang Yi — who has visited three countries in Africa this year — met with seven African counterparts in March alone. Last month, President Xi Jinping had what was billed as a “productive” telephone call with Cyril Ramaphosa, the leader of the region’s most developed economy, South Africa.

There’s been speculation that China may simply be trying to shore up support for its position on the Ukraine crisis, with Townsend noting: “Our African partners face choices to strengthen the U.S. and allied-led open, rules-based international order or succumb to the raw power transactional pressure campaigns of global competitors.”

Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA that China is trying to create a “non-aligned” axis as “Beijing does not want the Ukraine war to become a new Cold War with countries forced to choose between the U.S. and Russia.”

But China’s interest in Africa long predates the war in Ukraine.

Townsend noted the region is home to rare earth metals used for mobile phones, hybrid vehicles, and missile guidance systems, and stressed that “the winners and losers of the 21st century global economy may be determined by whether these resources are available in an open and transparent marketplace or are inaccessible due to predatory practices of competitors.”

West Africa base worries?

The continent also occupies a key geostrategic location. Townsend expressed concern that China — which already has a naval base at the mouth of the Red Sea in Djibouti — is looking at setting up another on the Atlantic coast. That, he said, would “almost certainly require the [Defense] department to consider shifts to U.S. naval force posture and pose increased risk to freedom of navigation and U.S. ability to act.”

Brautigam says she doubts it is in China’s interest to “carve out a threat posture in the Atlantic.”

She told VOA that “with continued terrorism and instability in Nigeria, Cameroon and other parts of the Gulf of Guinea, that area has become the world’s hotspot for piracy.” For China, as the world’s largest trading nation, “that’s reason enough to want an outpost to protect Chinese citizens and economic interests in the Gulf of Guinea.”

An op-ed in China’s state-affiliated Global Times in January appeared to echo this line of reasoning, noting that compared to hundreds of U.S. bases around the world, China only has one and its need for any more would purely be to “ensure local security and interests.”

Another piece in the paper insisted: “China is the most cautious and restrained in terms of overseas military base deployment, as China does not have a desire to project military power globally to support the strategic competition of major powers.”

“Nevertheless, as China’s overseas interests continue to expand, there will be an increasing need for the Chinese PLA Navy to defend the national interests in more distant regions, inevitably demanding footholds in some distant waters,” it read.

While China plays down any ambitions to build a West Africa base, a State Department spokesperson told VOA: “It is widely understood that they are working to establish a network of military installations. … Certain potential steps involving PRC-basing activity would raise security concerns for the United States.”

Debt trap accusations

As the two superpowers vie for influence in Africa, Beijing is regularly accused by the West of providing “debt trap” loans to countries on the continent and of working with some of the region’s less savory leaders.

Government mouthpieces like the Global Times and Xinhua reject those allegations, with one op-ed in March countering: “While China offers financial supports and affordable proposals to local economies to build up economic strength to weather challenges, some developed countries have only offered aid with political strings attached.”

And, in a recent interview with a Kenyan newspaper, The East African, China’s special envoy for the Horn of Africa Xue Bing blamed instability in that region on Western foreign intervention. “China will send out engineers and students. We don’t send out weapons. We don’t impose our views on others in the name of democracy or human rights,” he told the newspaper.

Asked if China has already outplayed America on the continent, the State Department spokesperson said: “The United States does not want to limit African partnerships with other countries. The United States wants to make African partnerships with the United States even stronger.”

But Brautigam said that aside from foreign aid, China is a bigger economic player on the continent than the U.S. in every area, adding: “It’s not clear that Washington has pivoted to Africa beyond rhetoric.”

Source: Voice of America

Monica Kariuki is about ready to give up on farming. What is driving her off her about 40,000 square feet (10 acres) of land outside Nairobi isn’t bad weather, pests or blight — the traditional agricultural curses — but fertilizer: It costs too much.

Despite thousands of miles separating her from the battlefields of Ukraine, Kariuki and her cabbage, corn and spinach farm are indirect victims of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The war has pushed up the price of natural gas, a key ingredient in fertilizer, and has led to severe sanctions against Russia, a major exporter of fertilizer.

Kariuki used to spend 20,000 Kenyan shillings, or about $175, to fertilize her entire farm. Now, she would need to spend five times as much. Continuing to work the land, she said, would yield nothing but losses.

“I cannot continue with the farming business. I am quitting farming to try something else,” she said.

Higher fertilizer prices are making the world’s food supply more expensive and less abundant, as farmers skimp on nutrients for their crops and get lower yields. While the ripples will be felt by grocery shoppers in wealthy countries, the squeeze on food supplies will land hardest on families in poorer countries. It could hardly come at a worse time: The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said last week that its world food-price index in March reached the highest level since it started in 1990.

The fertilizer crunch threatens to further limit worldwide food supplies, already constrained by the disruption of crucial grain shipments from Ukraine and Russia. The loss of those affordable supplies of wheat, barley and other grains raises the prospect of food shortages and political instability in Middle Eastern, African and some Asian countries where millions rely on subsidized bread and cheap noodles. “Food prices will skyrocket because farmers will have to make profit, so what happens to consumers?” said Uche Anyanwu, an agricultural expert at the University of Nigeria.

The aid group Action Aid warns that families in the Horn of Africa are already being driven “to the brink of survival.”

The U.N. says Russia is the world’s No. 1 exporter of nitrogen fertilizer and No. 2 in phosphorus and potassium fertilizers. Its ally Belarus, also contending with Western sanctions, is another major fertilizer producer.

Many developing countries — including Mongolia, Honduras, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Mexico and Guatemala — rely on Russia for at least a fifth of their imports.

The conflict also has driven up the already-exorbitant price of natural gas, used to make nitrogen fertilizer. The result: European energy prices are so high that some fertilizer companies “have closed their businesses and stopped operating their plants,” said David Laborde, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

For corn and cabbage farmer Jackson Koeth, 55, of Eldoret in western Kenya, the conflict in Ukraine was distant and puzzling until he had to decide whether to go ahead with the planting season. Fertilizer prices had doubled from last year.

Koeth said he decided to keep planting but only on half the acreage of years past. Yet he doubts he can make a profit with fertilizer so costly.

Greek farmer Dimitris Filis, who grows olives, oranges and lemons, said “you have to search to find” ammonia nitrate and that the cost of fertilizing a 10-hectare (25-acre) olive grove has doubled to 560 euros ($310). While selling his wares at an Athens farm market, he said most farmers plan to skip fertilizing their olive and orange groves this year.

“Many people will not use fertilizers at all, and this as a result, lowers the quality of the production and the production itself, and slowly, slowly at one point, they won’t be able to farm their land because there will be no income,” Filis said.

In China, the price of potash — potassium-rich salt used as fertilizer — is up 86% from a year earlier. Nitrogen fertilizer prices have climbed 39% and phosphorus fertilizer is up 10%.

In the eastern Chinese city of Tai’an, the manager of a 35-family cooperative that raises wheat and corn said fertilizer prices have jumped 40% since the start of the year.

“We can hardly make any money,” said the manager, who would give only his surname, Zhao.

Terry Farms, which grows produce on about 90,000 000 square feet (2,100 acres) largely in Ventura, California, has seen prices of some fertilizer formulations double; others are up 20%. Shifting fertilizers is risky, Vice President William Terry said, because cheaper versions might not give “the crop what it needs as a food source.”

As the growing season approaches in Maine, potato farmers are grappling with a 70% to 100% increase in fertilizer prices from last year, depending on the blend.

“I think it’s going to be a pretty expensive crop, no matter what you’re putting in the ground, from fertilizer to fuel, labor, electrical and everything else,” said Donald Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board.

In Prudentopolis, a town in Brazil’s Parana state, farmer Edimilson Rickli showed off a warehouse that would normally be packed with fertilizer bags but has only enough to last a few more weeks. He’s worried that, with the war in Ukraine showing no sign of letting up, he’ll have to go without fertilizer when he plants wheat, barley and oats next month.

“The question is: Where Brazil is going to buy more fertilizer from?” he said. “We have to find other markets.”

Other countries are hoping to help fill the gaps. Nigeria, for example, opened Africa’s largest fertilizer factory last month, and the $2.5 billion plant has already shipped fertilizer to the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico.

India, meanwhile, is seeking more fertilizer imports from Israel, Oman, Canada and Saudi Arabia to make up for lost shipments from Russia and Belarus.

“If the supply shortage gets worse, we will produce less,” said Kishor Rungta of the nonprofit Fertiliser Association of India. “That’s why we need to look for options to get more fertilizers in the country.”

Agricultural firms are providing support for farmers, especially in Africa where poverty often limits access to vital farm inputs. In Kenya, Apollo Agriculture is helping farmers get fertilizer and access to finance.

“Some farmers are skipping the planting season and others are going into some other ventures such as buying goats to cope,” said Benjamin Njenga, co-founder of the firm. “So, these support services go a long way for them.”

Governments are helping, too. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last month that it was issuing $250 million in grants to support U.S. fertilizer production. The Swiss government has released part of its nitrogen fertilizer reserves.

Still, there’s no easy answer to the double whammy of higher fertilizer prices and limited supplies. The next 12 to 18 months, food researcher LaBorde said, “will be difficult.”

The market already was “super, super tight” before the war, said Kathy Mathers of the Fertilizer Institute trade group.

“Unfortunately, in many cases, growers are just happy to get fertilizer at all,” she said.

Source: Voice of America