Can America Grow Its Own Fertilizer?

A new Siemens-Shomax partnership aims to produce zero-carbon green ammonia in North Texas, shielding US farmers from import price shocks

28 Apr 2026

American farmers heading into the 2026 planting season are staring down urea prices above $650 per ton, driven by Middle East instability and natural gas markets they have no power to influence. About 18 percent of US nitrogen fertilizer comes from imports. That's a lot of exposure for an industry feeding a country.

Siemens and Shomax want to change that math. The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding to build greenfield production facilities in North Texas for NitroLEAF, a zero-carbon green ammonia fertilizer that doesn't rely on fossil fuels to manufacture. Because it's made using off-grid solar-powered electrolysis rather than natural gas, its production costs don't track with crude prices or shipping disruptions. Shomax says it can offer farmers stable pricing at a meaningful discount to conventional nitrogen fertilizers, while also improving yields, trimming application volumes, and generating monetizable carbon credits.

Siemens brings process automation, power distribution, and digital twin simulation to the table. The practical benefit: faster commissioning, lower capital costs, and safer operations as the North Texas plant scales. Both companies describe the setup as a replicable model, not a one-off.

The context matters here. Phosphate and potash have recently been designated US critical minerals, and sustained price volatility tied to supply chains running through Russia, China, and the Middle East has pushed the conversation well past sustainability talking points. Domestic low-carbon nitrogen production is increasingly a food security argument. That's a harder case to ignore in Washington, on farm balance sheets, and in boardrooms calculating long-term supply risk.

Siemens and Shomax are positioning early. Whether NitroLEAF scales fast enough to move the needle on import dependence remains to be seen, but the commercial logic is straightforward: a fertilizer whose price doesn't swing with geopolitics looks attractive when geopolitics keeps swinging.