According to the US statistics service, between January and July of this year, the United States imported a record amount of Russian fertilizers, worth in total approximately $944 million.

Compared to the same period in 2022, the purchases increased roughly 5%. July imports however fell threefold compared to the previous month, reaching their lowest level since August of 2021.

With $944 million in sales, Russia was the second largest supplier of fertilizer to the United States, coming in behind Canada, which sold $2.8 billion of fertilizer to the United States from January to July. Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Qatar made up the other top five US suppliers.

As the largest fertilizer producer in the world,, Russia supplies about 15% of the world’s consumption of the commodity. Although Western sanctions did not directly target Russian fertilizer sales, the country regardless reoriented its sales to Asia.

In May, Andrey Guryev, the head of the Russian Fertilizer Producers Association (RAPU), projected that by the end of the year Russian fertilizer exports may reach the pre-sanctions levels of 38 million tons.

The average annual output of fertilizer by Russia is about 55 million tons.