Potash numbers came out this morning...Blow me away!!

Here is an excerpt from the release..

Market Conditions

    Continued rising world grain demand reduced the expected global
stocks-to-use ratio for wheat and coarse grains to a record low in the first
quarter of 2008. Low inventories of grains and oilseeds, a long-standing
problem, finally started to attract attention from the United Nations,
governments and the general public. Some Asian and Latin American countries
have now changed their export policies to ensure crops will be available for
their own domestic use. This has put further pressure on distribution of the
world's grain supply.
    This tight supply has resulted in higher prices for grain and other crops
which, in turn, have raised global demand for fertilizers. Combined with
product supply constraints and higher raw material input costs, particularly
for phosphate and nitrogen, prices for all three nutrients were pushed to
record levels in the first quarter. Although the expiration of contracts for
seaborne potash to China at the end of 2007 resulted in reduced shipments to
the world's largest potash importer in the first quarter of 2008, rising
demand in other markets more than offset this reduction. At quarter-end, North
American potash producer inventories remained 37 percent below the previous
five-year average.
    In phosphate, tight supply and rising costs for key inputs led to higher
prices. Spot prices for phosphate rock and sulfur rose fourfold and sevenfold,
respectively, over the same quarter last year, putting pressure on producers
that do not own their own rock supply and resulting in significant price
increases for downstream phosphate products. In nitrogen, global energy demand
raised prices for oil and natural gas. As the natural gas industry continued
to become more global, nitrogen producers in regions that had benefited from
lower-cost gas, including Russia and Ukraine, faced higher input costs,
raising the floor price for nitrogen globally. Natural gas costs also
continued to rise in the US and, by the end of the quarter, NYMEX contracts
for the next 12 months carried an average price of more than $10 per MMBtu.
Strong industrial and agricultural demand supported higher nitrogen prices,
particularly for ammonia, which by March exceeded $600 per tonne on a
delivered basis to the US Gulf.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/a...