Hormuz fertiliser block will upend world’s food production
Any ceasefire negotiations must include a humanitarian carve-out for such shipments
The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. Twenty-five per cent of the world’s traded oil passes through it. Everyone has been focused on that. But the strait also carries the fertiliser components that underpin roughly half the world’s food supply. And Iran has in effect closed it, in response to the US-Israeli strikes on its territory, during the four-week window when farmers in the northern hemisphere apply nitrogen to their crops.
Gulf states account for 49 per cent of globally traded urea and 30 per cent of ammonia, perishable contributors to the nitrogen cycle that makes high-yield agriculture possible. When that supply chain stops, the effects accumulate quietly in soil chemistry and planting decisions over the months that follow.
Corn planting estimates are already being revised down as farmers rotate towards soyabeans, which don’t require added nitrogen. That rotation locks in yield losses before a single seed goes in the ground.
Now add Ukraine. Before the first strike on Iran, the global food system was already running on reduced redundancy — Ukraine and Russia still represent about a quarter of global wheat trade, and some 400mn people across the Middle East and east Africa have been absorbing that supply shock for three years. The Hormuz closure isn’t breaking a healthy system. It is breaking one that was already compromised.
The agricultural damage clock runs in weeks. Winter wheat across the US, Europe and parts of the Middle East needs its final nitrogen application in the next three to four weeks.
The food security clock runs in months. Most import-dependent nations carry enough grain reserves to absorb a short disruption, not enough to outlast a season. The Horn of Africa is already on the edge of famine. This pushes it over.
Finally, the geopolitical clock runs in years. Food price spikes above 30 to 40 per cent have a documented correlation with political instability in fragile states within six to 18 months of the price trigger.
So what should the Trump administration do? It should insist that any ceasefire negotiations include explicit strait transit guarantees and a humanitarian carve-out for fertiliser and grain shipments — as preconditions, not as afterthoughts.
The US International Development Finance Corporation’s $20bn facility addresses war risk for shipping but not the environmental and pollution liability that now attaches to any vessel transiting a potentially mined waterway. Without a backstop modelled on the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act for Gulf environmental risk, the insurance market withdrawal is partially self-sustaining, independent of military conditions. That gap needs to close before the market reopens, not after.
Congress, meanwhile, should consider emergency authorisation of strategic fertiliser reserves, modelled on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Urea and ammonia are not on the federal critical minerals list. No strategic reserve exists for them, and no emergency authority clearly covers them. Congress should fix both.
Advance emergency funding from the World Food Programme also needs to move now, before price transmission reaches retail markets in those countries least able to absorb it. The harder problem is that the operational infrastructure to execute this response has been substantially dismantled: USAID and its NGO partner networks cannot be reconstituted on a 90-day timeline. Direct WFP funding, bilateral agreements and private sector logistics are all that’s left. They can move, but only if someone is building the timeline that shows what happens if they don’t.
If fertiliser isn’t moving through the Strait of Hormuz in two weeks’ time, we won’t be debating any more, we’ll be sending in aid. If it’s not moving in four weeks, we’ll be managing instability. It’s time to act on the agricultural calendar, not the diplomatic one.