Uncertainty and intense anxiety prevail among farmers around the world as the rapid rise in fertilizer and fuel prices due to the US-Israeli war in Iran is driving up production costs, with the possibility of a global food crisis looming.
Only six ships loaded with fertilizer have managed to cross the Strait of Hormuz since the war began on February 28. The last one carried just 20,000 tons from an Iranian port bound for Southeast Asia.
A third of all seaborne fertilizer exports come from the region, with most having stopped due to the blockade of Iran. Urea, the most widely used of all, is about 70% more expensive than before the war. Ammonia, another nitrogen fertilizer, is 39% more expensive.
It estimates that nearly 1.9 million tons of plant nutrients are stuck on 41 ships that cannot leave the Gulf — an amount equivalent to 12% of all fertilizers shipped through the Straits in 2024.
The problems are piling up
Transporting the necessary quantities of fertilizers is critical, as the planting season has already begun in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere. In India, for example, it is less than two months away. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is concerned and worried about where this crisis will end if the Straits are closed.
When the war in Iran broke out, the price of wheat rose by just 4% and has not changed much since. But this price reflects production that has already been harvested: last year’s crop was good. If harvests are disrupted in the second half of the year, price increases will follow.
Poor countries are vulnerable
Poor countries are particularly vulnerable. For example, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique and Zambia get more than a third of their nitrogen fertilizers from the Gulf. In South Asia, smallholder farmers use huge amounts of it to harvest as much as possible from their small plots of land.
Similarly, major food exporters such as India and Thailand get about 35% of their fertilizers from the Gulf. Bangladesh, which often has to import grains from India, gets more than half.
Low Stocks
Because fertilizers are bulky, perishable, and (usually) cheap, most farmers buy them when they need them, rather than holding onto them. That has left the market with little safety stock — and has caused a scramble to secure supplies.
Increasing domestic fertilizer production is also difficult. Natural gas, which typically accounts for more than two-thirds of the cost of producing fertilizers, is almost 70% more expensive than it was in February. Slovakia’s largest plant has cut ammonia production by 15%. India’s fertilizer plants, which usually buy large amounts of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf, are running on 70% of the fuel they would normally have. In Bangladesh, which also depends on imports of raw materials from the Middle East, four out of five fertilizer factories have closed.
The availability of hydrocarbons is a problem that goes beyond rising fertilizer prices. Combine harvesters and water pumps consume large amounts of diesel, the price of which has also risen sharply. In America, farmers spent $10 billion on this fuel in 2024, about 64% of their total fuel expenditure.
Food prices are difficult to predict
The World Food Programme, another UN agency, has said that a prolonged war could increase the number of people suffering from acute hunger by 45 million, reaching 363 million.
