How the Iran war threatens global food supply

About a third of all fertilizer shipped globally goes through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Now, shipping traffic has been reduced to a trickle because of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, and the prices of goods like oil, natural gas and fertilizer have been rising.

"Fertilizer prices are way up. They're up around 30 percent more in some parts of the world, and that's significant," says Noah Gordon, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iran are big global producers of fertilizer, and they export the raw ingredients other countries use to make their own fertilizers, like natural gas and minerals.

"You're also losing the other supplies that come from those countries and help produce fertilizer in other places," Gordon says.

Countries like Pakistan, India and Brazil rely on those supplies. Some plants in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan have had to stop fertilizer production entirely, Gordon says, as natural gas and oil prices also have spiked.

Global fertilizer production has been disrupted before, in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Back then, countries found alternatives like increasing imports from the Middle East, according to Máximo Torero, the chief economist for the United Nations Food and Agriculture organization. But that won't be possible this time, he says.

"The loss of Gulf exports creates an immediate global shortfall with no quick substitutes," says Torero. And, he says, there are no strategic international fertilizer stockpiles like there are for oil.

"Immediately the countries that will be the most impacted in south Asia are Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In East Africa will be Sudan, Kenya and Somalia. And in the Middle East, Turkey and Jordan," Torero says. The immediacy of the impact depends on the various planting seasons for each region.

In India, farmers are concerned about the high prices of fertilizer and whether there will even be enough of it for the planting season that starts in June, says Avinash Kishore, a researcher with the International Food Policy Research Institute in New Delhi.

"The preparation for fertilizers and other inputs needs to begin already. There is a little bit of nervousness about what if the war continues for too long. What will happen to the next season?" he says.

The almost-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the resulting rise in oil prices, will affect food production in other ways, too, says Torero.

"When you want to grow commodities, you need tractors. You need machinery that requires oil. When we want to move our maize or we want to move our commodities to the market, we require transportation, and that requires oil," he says.

What may come to pass, he says, is "less food in the markets, and as a result of that, the prices of food in the world will increase," Torero says.

He says, take rice, for example. The crop is critical for economies and people's diet across South Asia.

"Given that this region is very poor–half of the total household budget is spent on food–so even small increases in food prices have bigger impacts on how households fare," he says.

A 5-10% increase in food prices could be detrimental to hundreds of millions of families, according to Kishore. Children are particularly at risk of malnutrition in that scenario.

Another issue worrying farmers in major food-producing countries like Brazil and India is that the war is also hurting the export market.

"We do export a lot of food that we produce to countries in the Middle East, including Iran," says Kishore. "Those exports are also suffering"

India exports several forms of rice, including the popular basmati, and fruits like mangoes and grapes.

"Gulf countries are significant importers of Indian produce and that will also affect price expectations, so this could spell trouble," he says.

But if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened for international shipping in the next week or so, the FAO's Torero says that likely this disruption will be short-lived and the food supply won't suffer too much.

"We hope that quickly the markets can recover and we stabilize prices," he says.