Reviewed August 2026 against DTN’s weekly US retail fertilizer survey, University of Illinois farmdoc daily, and the World Bank Pink Sheet.
DAP Price Per 50 kg Bag: What the Rate Actually Is, and How to Check It Yourself
A 50 kg bag of DAP (18-46-0) works out to about $50.32 at the US national retail average of $913 per short ton reported for the week of July 20–24, 2026 by DTN’s retail fertilizer survey. The catch: no US dealer quotes DAP in 50 kg bags — the North American trade sells it by the short ton, bulk, so the bag figure is arithmetic (907.185 kg per short ton ÷ 50 = 18.14 bags per ton). Below is the per-ton-to-per-bag conversion for every major nutrient, the price path since late 2025, and a five-source checklist for pulling a rate fresher than this page.
What’s on This Page
The DAP Rate: Per Ton, Per 50 kg Bag, Per Pound of Nutrient
DTN surveys roughly 300 US retail locations and publishes averages in an article dated each Wednesday. For the week of July 20–24, 2026, DAP averaged $913/short ton, 13% above the same week of 2025. Two earlier readings from the same survey: $914/ton for the week of May 25–29, 2026 (+15% year on year) and $910/ton for the week of June 29–July 2, 2026 (+12%). Phosphate has been the flat line in a volatile market.
Converted to the 50 kg unit most people search for, that $913/ton is $50.32 per bag. One bag carries 9 kg of nitrogen and 23 kg of P₂O₅ — 19.8 lb N and 50.7 lb P₂O₅ in US units. At a 60 lb P₂O₅/acre rate, a single 50 kg bag covers 0.85 acre.
Full Fertilizer Price Conversion Table
This is the table an AI summary will not build for you: the same week’s survey expressed four ways, so you can check a dealer’s quote against it in whichever unit they use. Nutrient costs are derived by dividing the per-ton price by the pounds of nutrient in a ton. For DAP and MAP, the nitrogen is valued at urea’s implied nitrogen cost ($0.74/lb N at $683/ton urea) and subtracted before the phosphate cost is calculated.
| Product | $ / short ton | $ / 50 kg bag | $ / lb of nutrient | vs. July 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DAP 18-46-0 | 913 | 50.32 | 0.70 / lb P₂O₅ | +13% |
| MAP 11-52-0 | 958 | 52.79 | 0.76 / lb P₂O₅ | +9% |
| Potash 0-0-60 | 494 | 27.23 | 0.41 / lb K₂O | +2% |
| Urea 46-0-0 | 683 | 37.64 | 0.74 / lb N | +6% |
| Anhydrous ammonia | 962 | 53.02 | 0.59 / lb N | +26% |
| UAN28 | 473 | 26.07 | 0.84 / lb N | +13% |
| UAN32 | 461 | 25.41 | 0.72 / lb N | −7% |
Unit reminders: 1 short ton = 907.185 kg = 18.14 bags of 50 kg; 1 metric tonne = exactly 20 bags of 50 kg. A quote “per tonne” is therefore about 10% more product than a quote “per ton” — a difference of roughly $90 on DAP at July 2026 levels.
How DAP Got to This Level Since September 2025
Two independent series tell the same story. University of Illinois economists Schnitkey, Paulson and Zulauf, writing on farmdoc daily on 5 May 2026, report Illinois DAP averaging $862/ton across September 2025 through February 2026 and $870/ton as of 1 May 2026 — a rise of under 1%. The national retail survey then shows DAP in the $910–$914 band across three separate weeks between late May and late July 2026. The gap between the Illinois figure and the national average is normal: Illinois is a barge-served, high-volume market and usually prices below the national mean.
On the international benchmark, the World Bank reported that DAP rose more than 10% in April 2026 after being broadly flat earlier in the year, part of a 14% jump in its overall fertilizer price index that month.
Why Phosphate Moved Far Less Than Nitrogen
Anyone budgeting a whole fertiliser programme should notice that DAP was the calm product. The same farmdoc daily analysis of Strait of Hormuz–related supply disruption puts Illinois anhydrous ammonia at $828/ton for the September 2025–February 2026 window versus $1,123/ton on 17 April 2026 — a 36% increase. UAN28 went from $436 to $543/ton by 1 May 2026 (+25%). DAP moved $862 to $870 (+0.9%) and potash $493 to $505 (+2.4%).
The mechanism is straightforward: ammonia and urea production is priced off natural gas and is concentrated in a handful of exporting regions exposed to that shipping route, while phosphate value sits mostly in mined rock and processing capacity. The World Bank noted urea climbing above $850 per metric tonne in April 2026, up 80% since February 2026, in the same 14 May 2026 assessment that put DAP’s April gain at just over 10%. If you are pricing a 50 kg bag of DAP against a nitrogen product, that divergence is the number that matters.
Why Your Local Rate Differs From the National Average
A national average is a starting point, not a quote. Four things move your delivered rate away from $913/ton:
- Freight from the terminal. Producer or import terminals sit on the Mississippi and Ohio river systems, the Gulf, and the Atlantic and Pacific ports. Truck freight inland is the single biggest source of spread between two dealers 200 miles apart.
- Fill versus in-season pricing. Summer fill programmes price product before autumn application. Illinois DAP at $870/ton on 1 May 2026 against a national retail $913–914/ton in the same period is exactly this kind of gap.
- Bulk versus bagged. Bagging, palletising and handling are a real cost. If a US dealer will sell you a 50 kg or 50 lb bag at all, expect a premium over the bulk ton — ask for both quotes and compare on a per-pound-of-P₂O₅ basis using the table above.
- Currency and market. British readers buy DAP by the metric tonne: the AHDB survey of GB merchants and grower groups recorded £798/tonne on 24 July 2026 and £796/tonne on 17 July 2026 for spot delivery — about £39.90 for a 50 kg equivalent. AHDB publishes weekly spot prices every Friday for the previous Friday, plus a monthly average in the first week of each month, on its GB fertiliser prices page.
Checklist: How to Get Today’s Fertilizer Price
Every figure above carries a date because every one of them will be stale eventually. This is the durable part of the page — the method for getting a fresher number than ours, in priority order.
- DTN Retail Fertilizer Trends — the weekly US national retail average for eight products, published in an article dated each Wednesday. The 22 July 2026 edition is one week’s instalment; check for the most recent dated article.
- USDA AMS Illinois Production Cost Report — a biweekly government report giving low, high and average dealer prices for DAP, urea, potash, ammonia, UAN and farm diesel. It is issued as a PDF at ams.usda.gov/mnreports/ams_3195.pdf (the older plain-text version, report code gx_gr210, was discontinued on 24 February 2022). This is the closest thing to an official US price print.
- AHDB GB fertiliser prices — weekly and monthly £/tonne spot averages for nine products including DAP and TSP, downloadable as a spreadsheet.
- World Bank Pink Sheet — monthly international benchmark prices in US dollars per metric tonne, for DAP, urea, potash, TSP and phosphate rock. Use it to see whether a local move is global or local.
- Three local quotes, same day, same specification. Ask each dealer for: price per ton or tonne, whether it is bulk or bagged, whether freight and spreading are included, the delivery window, and the guaranteed analysis. Then convert everything to dollars per pound of P₂O₅ before deciding.
One trap worth naming: USDA’s Economic Research Service Fertilizer Use and Price data product is excellent for long-run consumption history back to 1960, but its farm-level price series ends at 2014 and its wholesale price indexes at 2018 (page last updated 30 December 2025). It is not a source for today’s rate, and any page quoting it as one is misleading you.
Calculator: Bag Cost and Cost Per Pound of P₂O₅
Put your own dealer quote in and see what it means per 50 kg bag, per pound of phosphate after crediting the nitrogen, and per acre.
Run your own numbers
Assumes DAP is 18-46-0 and urea 46-0-0 as guaranteed on the label. The nitrogen in DAP is credited at urea’s implied cost per pound of N, so the phosphate figure is a net cost. Excludes freight, bagging premiums, spreading or application charges, sales tax, storage, and any prepay discount or interest. It is a price-comparison tool, not an agronomic recommendation — set your rate from a soil test.
Is DAP the Cheapest Way to Buy Phosphate?
At the week of July 20–24, 2026 prices, yes — narrowly. DAP delivers P₂O₅ at $0.70/lb net of its nitrogen credit against MAP's $0.76/lb, because MAP's $958/ton headline carries less nitrogen to offset it. That six-cent gap is worth about $3 per acre at a 60 lb P₂O₅ rate, so it should not override agronomic reasons for choosing MAP, such as starter placement or an alkaline soil. Rerun the comparison whenever either price moves: the ranking flipped historically and will again.
The second reason to think in nutrients rather than bags: 36% of a 50 kg DAP bag is neither N nor P₂O₅. You pay to freight that mass too, which is why bulk-versus-bagged and haul distance matter as much as the headline rate.
What Would Move the Price From Here
The World Bank's May 2026 forecast, published 14 May 2026, is for DAP to rise nearly 6% across 2026 and then fall about 10% in 2027, with urea up nearly 60% in 2026 before easing in 2027 and MOP up about 12% in 2026 then down 6% in 2027. Treat those as an institution's annual-average projections, not a price you can buy at.
Four watch items that would break that path:
- Ammonia and sulphur input costs. DAP is roughly one part ammonia to two parts phosphoric acid by value; sustained ammonia strength of the kind seen between February and April 2026 eventually pulls phosphate up with it.
- Shipping-route disruption. The Strait of Hormuz episode the World Bank and farmdoc both flag hit nitrogen hardest, but any freight-rate shock raises delivered phosphate too.
- Export policy from major producing countries. Restrictions or quotas on finished phosphate exports tighten what is available to importers and lift the international benchmark.
- Crop prices and demand destruction. When the ratio of maize or wheat price to phosphate price gets bad enough, growers cut rates or skip a year, and demand does the correcting. Watch the farmdoc daily fertilizer decision series, which converts prices into cost-per-pound-of-nutrient decisions.
Cutting the Bag Count With Satellite Data
At $50.32 a bag, the cheapest phosphate is the bag you did not need to spread. Farmonaut is not a fertilizer seller or price reporter; it supplies the field-level evidence that decides where product goes. Satellite crop-health and soil-moisture maps show which zones are actually responding, so variable-rate plans can be built from imagery instead of a whole-field average.
- Field monitoring and advisory on Farmonaut's web and mobile apps, with the yield-focused agronomy behind high-yield crop planning.
- Multi-farm operations: large-scale farm management for tracking input use across blocks.
- Emissions accounting on fertiliser inputs via carbon footprinting, and input-chain provenance through blockchain product traceability.
- Where the phosphate comes from in the first place: what phosphate rock is used for.
- Finance and risk: satellite-verified crop loan and insurance support.
- Distribution and haulage: fleet and resource management for bulk fertiliser delivery.
- Developers: the Farmonaut API and API developer docs.
Frequently Asked Questions
About $50.32, derived from the US national retail average of $913 per short ton for the week of July 20–24, 2026 (DTN). There are 18.14 fifty-kilogram units in a short ton and exactly 20 in a metric tonne. British merchants quoted £798/tonne on 24 July 2026 (AHDB), equal to £39.90 per 50 kg.
No published series updates daily. The fastest US refresh is DTN's weekly survey, dated each Wednesday; USDA AMS issues the Illinois Production Cost Report biweekly; AHDB posts GB weekly spot prices every Friday for the previous Friday; the World Bank Pink Sheet is monthly. For a rate you can actually transact at, ring three dealers the same day and specify bulk or bagged, freight, and delivery window.
North American row-crop phosphate moves in bulk by the short ton, blended and spread by the dealer. Bagged DAP exists for horticulture and small acreage but carries a bagging and handling premium over the bulk ton, so compare on dollars per pound of P₂O₅ rather than per bag.
Nitrogen. Illinois anhydrous ammonia went from a $828/ton average across September 2025–February 2026 to $1,123/ton on 17 April 2026, and UAN28 from $436 to $543/ton by 1 May 2026, while DAP moved only $862 to $870 and potash $493 to $505 (farmdoc daily, 5 May 2026).
At the week of July 20–24, 2026 US retail averages, DAP costs $0.70 per lb of P₂O₅ after crediting its nitrogen at urea-equivalent value, versus $0.76 for MAP at $958/ton. Recheck with the calculator above whenever either quote changes.
The World Bank's 14 May 2026 projection has DAP up nearly 6% on an annual-average basis in 2026, then down about 10% in 2027. That is a forecast, not a commitment; ammonia and sulphur costs, freight disruption and export policy are what would break it.
The Short Version
DAP sat in a $910–$914 per short ton band across three surveyed weeks between 25 May and 24 July 2026 — a 50 kg bag equivalent of $50.15 to $50.38 — after moving less than 1% in Illinois dealer terms through the nitrogen spike of early 2026. The number will change; the method will not. Convert every quote to dollars per pound of P₂O₅, net of the nitrogen it carries, before you compare products or dealers, and pull the figure yourself from the weekly and biweekly series listed above rather than from any page's stated price.
All prices carry the date and source of the print they came from. Figures per 50 kg, per acre and per pound of nutrient are calculated from those published prices using standard conversions (907.185 kg per short ton; 2.20462 lb per kg).
