The war in Iran could plunge the world into hunger
Until the end of February, a constant flow of ships bound for all over the world passed through the Strait of Hormuz daily. A narrow canal connecting Oman and Iran, the waterway provides the only natural maritime link between the Persian Gulf and the global economy. That all changed on March 2, when, after days of military strikes by the United States and Israel, Iran effectively closed the strait for the first time in its history and warned that any ship passing through it would be fired upon. Since then, ships traveling through the canal have been attacked and set on fire, and hundreds of tankers remain stranded. At least 1,800 people have been killed in the war, including Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior government officials.
The Persian Gulf is a pillar of the planet’s oil and gas production; Normally, about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes through the strait. Today, as the country remains struggling, oil and gas prices have soared, and many experts warn that an energy crisis is looming. Restaurants across India are scaling back operations and warning of closures due to fuel shortages from the maritime blockade, while cooking gas prices are soaring in Sri Lanka.
Another global crisis triggered by the war in Iran could also be looming. Indeed, the region’s oil and gas production has made it one of the world’s leading exporters of nitrogen fertilizers, essential to the global food system. To produce the chemicals used in most of the world’s crops, natural gas is broken down to extract hydrogen, which is combined with nitrogen to produce ammonia, and then with carbon dioxide to produce urea. In total, almost a third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz, while almost half of the world’s sulfur, essential for the production of phosphate fertilizers, also passes through this corridor.
The waterway is also a lifeline for food. Palm oil exports from Southeast Asia are likely to face major disruptions. Grain shipments to Gulf countries dependent on rice and wheat imports have stalled.
“A concerning amount of food, or inputs in modern agriculture, is going through this very small channel,” said Ginni Braich, a data scientist who studies food insecurity at the Better Planet Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She estimates that the strait is in the top 20th percentile of all the world’s transportation corridors, simply based on the volume of food passing through it. The sudden, cascading effects of shutting down trade through the waterway, Braich said, “really highlights how interconnected and fragile everything is…the slightest disruption can have huge aftershocks that reverberate around the world.”
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The timing, Braich said, couldn’t be worse, as spring planting in the northern hemisphere – the biggest season for farmers – approaches. “So basically the ships leaving the Middle East today would arrive in mid-April,” she said. “Now the fact that nothing is leaving means there is going to be a big hole in the fertilizer market.”
If the war persists, experts warn that falling supply and rising cargo insurance premiums and freight rates could drive up prices for everyone in the supply chain. Unlike oil, there is no significant strategic reserve for nitrogen fertilizers, so there is no equivalent stockpile to help cushion shocks. Even though the United States produces some of its own fertilizer, domestic producers cannot quickly replace the millions of tons of fertilizer. Other countries more dependent on fertilizer imports from the Middle East, such as India, will be hit hard by the cessation of traffic across the strait. China, Indonesia, Morocco and several sub-Saharan African countries are also expected to be affected by the global sulfur export standoff from the Gulf.
Additionally, Braich warned, any prolonged increases in shipping and inventory costs “are going to be felt by the consumer.”
For some, the impact is already there. Prices of major fertilizers have increased because of the war and are expected to reduce producers’ profit margins, which could lead them to ration their fertilizer use, thereby reducing yields, or even abandon input-intensive crops. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday that the Trump administration is “looking at every possible option” to address “skyrocketing” fertilizer costs for U.S. farmers “based on actions on the other side of the world.”
About 4 billion people on the planet eat foods grown with synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. In other words, about half the world’s population is alive because of these chemicals turned into plant nutrients, said Lorenzo Rosa, a researcher on sustainable energy, water and food systems at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University.
Of course, the fact that natural gas is the key to the mass production of synthetic fertilizers has its own dire climate consequences. Together, the manufacture and application of synthetic fertilizers in fields and farms accounts for more than 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, roughly equivalent to the CO2 emissions of global aviation. There are low-emissions alternatives to this process, Rosa argued: Nitrogen could be recycled from waste, and natural gas plants could be powered by local or renewable energy sources and built closer to farms that need fertilizer.
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Normally, the centralized – and therefore fragile – fossil fuel-based fertilizer and food supply chain is much cheaper than its alternative. But major shocks like the US-Israeli war on Iran reveal the dangerous vulnerability of this system, no matter how efficient and financially sound it may be. “At some point, a country will have to decide: ‘Do I want cheap fertilizer, importing it from the Strait of Hormuz or from another country? Or do I prefer to pay a green premium and have my own domestic production and my own energy and food security?'” Rosa said.
USDA Secretary Rollins acknowledged this vulnerability during Tuesday’s press conference. “We get almost all of our urea, almost all of our phosphate, almost all of our nitrogen from other countries in the world, and that has to stop,” she said.
The problem, however, is that decentralizing this supply chain could inadvertently create a green divide, separating the world between nations and farmers who can afford to buy locally produced fertilizer and those who cannot. Many African countries facing widespread famine, for example, already pay the highest fertilizer prices in the world and are unable to withstand further inflation.
“There are many steps on the path from closing the Strait of Hormuz to feeding a child in Malawi,” said Cary Fowler, president of the nonprofit Food Security Leadership Council and former U.S. special envoy for global food security in the Biden administration. “What is clear is that these two things are linked.”
The same countries that stand to suffer the most adverse effects on food security from the conflict in Iran are also those struggling to feed their citizens following the collapse of global food aid after President Donald Trump disbanded the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, last year. It is in emergency situations like these that the international community’s response becomes increasingly important, Fowler said.
In addition to the dissolution of USAID, which halted international research efforts and initiatives to improve agricultural practices in low-income countries, the World Food Program has sounded the alarm in recent months over historically low donations from the United States and other major Western donors.
“If we don’t invest in this sustainable productivity growth, we will find ourselves in a situation where we will need a lot more humanitarian aid, particularly in a crisis like the one we are experiencing now,” Fowler said. “And that gives us another choice: whether or not to provide this humanitarian aid. And it’s a choice whether we want to, at least in the short term, solve the problem. Or do we want to see children starving on television?”
It is unclear how long the strait will remain closed, although Trump has oscillated between saying the war with Iran could extend into April or longer and declaring it is almost over. Last week, the president announced that the United States could begin escorting oil tankers through the besieged canal. “No matter what, the United States will guarantee the FREE FLOW OF ENERGY to the WORLD,” Trump wrote on social media, before later declaring “death, fire and fury” if Iran continues its maritime blockade. On Sunday, he told Fox News that the ships stationed there should “be brave” and move on.
The president made no mention of fertilizer – or food.
Rahul Bali of WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station and Grist partner, contributed reporting.
