http://www.boston.com/news/daily/15/attacks_fertilizer.htm

Fertilizer industry taking second look at purchase controls it once resisted

By Philip Brasher, Associated Press, 10/15/01

WASHINGTON -- More than six years after Timothy McVeigh used a truckload of fertilizer to destroy the Oklahoma City federal building, you still don't need a license or even personal identification to buy the material.

McVeigh used two tons of ammonium nitrate, which is commonly applied to wheat and pasture crops, and mixed it with a motor fuel to make a cheap but powerful explosive. Recipes for such bombs have circulated widely for years.

Three years ago, the National Academy of Sciences recommended banning sales of packaged ammonium nitrate unless dealers required IDs from buyers and kept accurate records. It laid additional steps if terrorism threats increased, including putting chemical markers in fertilizer to aid bomb-sensing equipment and licensing fertilizer dealers.

Little has been done since then, largely because of opposition from agriculture interests and the fertilizer industry.

"The regulatory issues were considered to be very costly for American agriculture, which was being challenged at that stage and still is," said Mary Anne Fox, a chemist who co-chaired the study for the science academy's National Research Council.

In light of last month's terrorist attacks, the fertilizer industry is reconsidering its stance.

"September 11th changed the landscape for a whole host of businesses," said Kathy Mathers, a spokeswoman for the Fertilizer Institute. "It's safe to say that all these will be on the menu for discussions in the immediate future."

Fox, chancellor at North Carolina State University, agreed that "the mood is much different now."

"The question politically is whether that's a sufficiently increased threat to mandate the restrictions on our freedom," she said.

The Treasury Department agency that regulates explosives -- the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms -- has been studying the ammonium nitrate issue since 1996 but has yet to release a final report.

After Sept. 11, the agency put out a general alert to the explosives industry, but not to fertilizer companies.

"It looks like the industry has done a pretty good job of screening their own sales and watching the safety of their own product and the security of the storage," said ATF spokesman Jim Crandall.

Fertilizer distributors say they have stepped up their education of employees and doublechecked fences and storage facilities to prevent thefts. The Fertilizer Institute has an ongoing security awareness program aimed at dealers, distributors and haulers. A toll-free phone number is provided to report suspicious activity to the ATF.

Agriliance LLC, one of the biggest distributors of farm chemicals, ordered new rounds of security employee training and required supervisors to sign affidavits vouching that the sessions had taken place.

Agriliance, based in St. Paul, Minn., has 70 distribution and retail facilities. Store employees know their buyers personally so they don't need to ask for identification, said Kent Kutnink, the company's regulatory manager. "They have a very defined trade area; all our locations do."

Fox of the research council said methods of rendering ammonium nitrate inert have proven either ineffective or too costly. Such an additive must be nontoxic and yet difficult to remove from the fertilizer.

"That is always a challenge," said Amit Roy, president of the International Fertilizer Development Center, a nonprofit research organization.

To deter terrorists in Northern Ireland, Britain once required clay to be added to fertilizer, but bombmakers simply removed the clay and had a purer form of the ammonium nitrate.

Studies have found no practical additive, or taggant, that could be put in fertilizer to aid investigators in tracking down the perpetrators after a bombing. However, the fertilizer development center has developed a method of tracing ammonium nitrate to its manufacturer.

There are fewer than 15 manufacturers in the United States, Roy said. About 1.6 million tons of ammonium nitrate are sold annually. A ton sells for about $200.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Answers

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/288/nation/FARM_SCENE_Some_good_news_f or_:.shtml

FARM SCENE: Some good news for farmers as falling natural gas prices mean lower fertilizer costs

By Jack Sullivan, Associated Press, 10/15/2001 02:25

FARGO, N.D. (AP) Faced with rising fertilizer costs, many farmers bought their supplies last fall to secure the lowest price they could find.

They face the opposite equation this year: Falling natural gas prices have pulled down the price of fertilizers produced with the fuel, and farmers who buy too early may ask themselves whether they're locking in too high.

Fertilizers such as anhydrous ammonia and urea are made with natural gas and used across the country to add nitrogen to farmland. They are applied either after harvest for the next crop year or before spring planting. Like home heating bills, their price rises and falls with that of natural gas.

Nitrogen-fertilizer prices this fall are roughly two-thirds of what they were in the spring, said Mike Severson, a manager of the Hope Farmers Elevator Co. in Steele County. That translates into about a $120 per ton cut in the cost of anhydrous, and a price cut of about $65 per ton for urea, he said.

The drop in price brings fertilizer prices down to about where they were before prices started to rise at the end of last year, said Andrew Swenson, a farm management specialist at North Dakota State University.

''Prior to that last year's bump, we had anhydrous prices that were pretty reasonable,'' Swenson said.

The reduction amounts to about a $6,500 cut in costs for a typical farm in North Dakota or in the Midwest's Corn Belt, Swenson said. Savings in other parts of the country vary because the amount and type of fertilizer needed changes with soil conditions.

North Dakota retail fertilizer prices are close to those found in other parts of the Midwest, said Dave Franzen, a former agronomist for an Illinois fertilizer company.

Franzen, who now works as a soil specialist for North Dakota State University Extension Service, said last year's price jump was the worst he's seen in 25 years of working in or watching the industry.

Basic supply and demand caused the big change in price over the last year, said Scott Hults, manager of gas supply planning for Xcel Energy in St. Paul, Minn. The company estimates its residential customers will see winter heating bills as much as 45 percent lower than last year because of declining natural gas prices.

Before last year, a stretch of warm winters had reduced demand for natural gas, which in turn reduced price and supply, Hults said. Production also was reduced when companies ''just hadn't sunk a lot of money into the ground because the price was so low,'' he said.

Then unusually cold weather last winter increased demand, straining production and stores and raising prices, he said.

In response, production was ramped up and storage facilities were topped off over the summer, two moves that brought prices back down again.

The swing was quicker than typical in a cyclical industry in which producers rush ''to one side of the boat or the other, depending on what the price is,'' Hults said.

On the Net:

http://www.lawnfertilizers.com

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

It takes us a while to catch on, donit?

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Unless rules are different in different states, here in Iowa you have to be certified to apply certain chemicals, anhydrous (ammonium nitrate) is one of them. In order to get a tank, you have to show your certification. Of course, out here in the boonies, everyone knows everyone, so for a stranger to try and buy would be suspect anyway.

A bigger problem to me is to get the farm co-ops and stores that sell anhydrous to put the special valves on them so no one can just come up and steal some from a tank sitting in the field or even back at the lot. They keep saying it costs too much at less than $20/tank.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Maybe if someone mentioned "liability" to them. . .

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

liability would only work if the penalty was death, me thinks at my most cynical.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

For those of us (like me) who don't think Timmy's fertilizer truck had much to do with the extent of damage in OKC, I've had a whacky theory that maybe one of the intended side benefits was to let people believe that fertilizer trucks really are effective weapons.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Brooks,

I believe you are right about the fertilizer. There is a link below that will take you to a site that examines, in detail, the facts surrounding the OKC incident. One of the facts is that a Pentagon study done after the blast concluded it's just not possible for 4,000 pounds of fertilizer mix to do that kind of damage. And, common fertilizer bombs must be mixed/stirred just shortly before being used or the ingredients separate out resulting in a very degraded blast. Also, such bombs always leave remains of unexploded fertilizer all around the blast center, which didn't happen at the OKC scene.

If you have time to dig into the statements being made at the web site you will find a lot of very troubling trails. Just click through the opening page and find the items about OKC further down the page. But keep a barf bag handy because the conclusions will make you sick.

Link

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Gordon, more and more I hear people around me saying they know not to believe everything the admin tells them any more because of such and such. Most recently it was references to TWA800 in light of the early reports about the Russian airliner that crashed over the Ukraine. And yet, if you were to mention another incident with just as much damning evidence, they'll suggest you're crazy. I think there are really very few people capable of accepting that we might have had a hand (or at least a blind eye) in the OKC bombing. Because, then what do you do with that information?

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Brooks,

There's nothing you can *do* with such information. Except to educate yourself, period! Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers, but even that statement refers to our spiritual journey and not our physical life. When I post such things it's merely to direct attention to certain strange things "going on" in our lives, in our country, the world. It's not to try to change it all, because that is impossible.

I think I first learned how fruitless it is to try to expose the truth when I started digging into data about the JFK assassination. Who really cares, as far as the general public is concerned? Oh, I know they care in a self protective way, but not enough to dig up the dirty facts and reach a spine tingling conclusion. No, not that much.

So, I am just along for the ride right now, watching all this stuff unfold like some dark drama. I can relate to people like Dr. Steven Greer, or Col. Philip Corso, who have tried so hard to wake people up. Tried, without success, to get some "official" inquiry going that would lead to open exposure of all the facts available to us. No, the overwhelming majority of the public are just going to be stunned at some point in the future when they realize what has happened to them, but by that point it will be too late to make any real change. We have seen this happen time after time in dictatorial takeovers in countries all over the world. The next stop is NWO the way I see it.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Greer has scaled back, perhaps in the aftermath of 9/11. I had hoped to see his show in Boston this Sunday, but he cancelled that and a few others.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001