MaxPixel

With tankers carrying urgently needed synthetic fertilizers and their precursors sitting idle in the Strait of Hormuz, trapped by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, an international organization urged all parties to secure immediate safe passage for such vessels to avoid catastrophic harm to global food supplies.

Roughly 30% of the world’s fertilizer trade, much of it destined for Africa and Asia, passes through the Strait of Hormuz, said the International Crisis Group (ICG). Even countries not immediately dependent on that trade will shortly feel the shock of reduced fertilizer supplies and the consequent surge in prices.

With the planting of critical crops like rice, corn, and winter wheat either under way or imminent, the effective closure of this vital waterway could not have come at a worse time, especially for already vulnerable countries like Sudan, warned the ICG.

Responding to the looming catastrophe, ICG urged creation of a “Hormuz transit initiative,” possibly modelled on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a mechanism brokered by the UN and Türkiye in 2022 that saw Ukraine and Russia come together to allow shipments of Ukrainian grain and fertilizer through the Black Sea even as the war between the two countries raged on.

Such an initiative in the Gulf  “would be independent of any plan to open the strait by force,” and serve the interests of both Iran and the U.S., the ICG noted. “Meanwhile, it would also help farmers and consumers, while lowering the conflict’s costs to the rest of the world.”

The move to try to secure the fertilizer trade through the Strait of Hormuz came as experts warned that the impact of the Iran war on global food markets could far exceed the damage caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour Ukraine in 2022.

“The initial disruption four years ago was concentrated in Black Sea grain exports before rippling out to energy and fertilizer markets,” wrote the Financial Times. “This time it is hitting several parts of the system at once.”

Fuels used by billions of households to transport, store, and cook food staples, as well as the fertilizers and their fossil fuel-based precursors used to grow those staples, have been hostages to the still-escalating conflagration in the Gulf, and to whatever happens next.

Even less immediately exposed countries, like the United States, are at risk of rapid food-price inflation. This could spell deep trouble for the Trump administration as it heads into midterm elections in mid-November. The peril is compounded by other economic stressors within a core Trump constituency: farmers in the country’s Midwest.

All parties to the conflict need urgently to attend to looming agricultural imperatives, like the need to apply nitrogen to winter wheat crops across the U.S., Europe, and many countries in the Middle East within the next month, wrote Chris Krebs in a recent op-ed for the Times. Krebs is the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under the first Trump administration.

Countries also need to reckon with the reality that the Horn of Africa, in particular, is going to need food aid. The delivery of such aid is already imperilled after the Trump administration gutted USAID and NGO partner networks, and further political instability will also push food prices higher.

In related news, Climate and Capital Media reports on how the Iran war is pushing Asia to “break its fertilizer habit.”