We may be on the verge of another global food emergency. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz bottled up some 30 percent of the nitrogen fertiliser normally supplied to the world’s farmers, and food production depends critically on that mineral. Prices for a common type of nitrogen, called urea, jumped more than 50 percent in major markets in the middle of the crisis, and that increase coincided with the spring planting season in the Northern Hemisphere. Farmers consequently bought and used less of it, which is likely to reduce total production as the 2026 harvest is completed in the coming months.¹

Whether we can expect broad food shortages across the world is still unclear, however. Food prices are elevated compared to the relatively low prices that prevailed for decades. However, the recent price spike is not as severe, so far, as the one that accompanied the start of the Ukraine war, which temporarily shut off exports from Ukraine, one of the world’s major breadbaskets.

The reality of higher prices is being felt all over the world, and indeed, the sense that things are out of control at the supermarket is one of the factors feeding the populist political revolt. Nevertheless, higher prices tend to lead to extensive malnutrition only in the poorest countries, where families spend most of their household income buying food. The number of people suffering acute hunger is currently estimated at 318 million,² with the World Food Programme warning that it could jump as high as 363 million,³ but if this materialises it will happen over the better part of a year. The most severe problems at the time of this writing are not a result of the Hormuz crisis but are in regions directly affected by drought or war. One of the world’s worst hunger spots at the moment appears to be the Gaza Strip, where the normal flow of food has been interrupted by displacement and by Israeli military action.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has, however, highlighted a mutual co-dependency that had received little attention until recently. After decades of rapid population growth, the broad desert and semi-desert region stretching from North Africa to the Middle East is home to about 600 million people. At the time of the first oil crisis, in 1973, Saudi Arabia had a population of seven million; that has since jumped to 35 million.⁴ By 2050, according to United Nations estimates, the population of the region is headed toward 792 million.⁵

By and large, the people living in this region do not have enough water and fertile land to produce their own food. They are dependent on imports, with home-grown food covering less than half of what some countries eat, and in the most exposed, barely more than 10 percent.⁶ What they do have, however, is oil; in a roundabout way, the oil exports from the Middle East pay for the food imports. The dependency runs both ways, however. The region has abundant fossil gas. The nitrogen fertiliser that underpins world food production is created by combining fossil gas with nitrogen from the air. Before the war broke out, the Middle East had become the source of almost a third of the world’s nitrogen fertilisers.⁷ So the people of the Middle East depend on the rest of the world to grow their food, and the farmers who do the growing depend heavily on the Middle East to supply the inputs they require. The situation is a hallmark of modern times, creating gleaming, teeming cities in parts of the world that were inhabited not that long ago by desert nomads.

The Strait of Hormuz blockade broke the trade in both directions. Gas, oil and fertilisers could not get out; grain shipments could not get in. Sulphur used in many of the world’s most important mines could not get out.⁸ Helium used to produce the world’s computer chips could not get out.⁹ Fortunately, the result was not an immediate crisis in most goods trade: the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz had long been understood, and many at-risk countries and industries had built strategic stockpiles. We have already mentioned China’s oil stockpile, apparently massive in scope. Similarly, many governments around the Persian Gulf had the perspicacity years ago to set up strategic national grain reserves.¹⁰

Many people probably imagine that governments everywhere, like those of the Arab states, hold food reserves sufficient to feed their people in case of crisis. It is, however, less true than it used to be. At a global scale, we more or less eat what we grow from year to year. Most governments depend on the just-in-time deliveries of the global trade system to keep their people fed. A true global-scale interruption of food production — from, say, a massive volcanic eruption that blackened the sky for months, or from failures in multiple breadbaskets caused by climate change — would almost certainly produce chaos, panic and mass starvation. However, some countries do hold food reserves, most notably China, where famines that killed millions have taught the government to be exceedingly cautious about keeping the population fed. China not only holds reserves of grain, but even an immense reserve of frozen pork.¹¹  

With ships sneaking through the Strait of Hormuz under cover of darkness, we suspect some food deliveries are actually being made. Outside the known trouble spots, like Gaza, there is no indication that countries of the region are worried about running out. At a global scale, the potential shortfall in production from the Hormuz crisis will take many more months to show itself fully, and will intersect with other hits to food production, including the strengthening El Niño weather pattern. This means it will be a while before we know the full magnitude of the food crisis, and its effects on the world’s poorest people.

The situation offers opportunities. Some countries have a history of overusing nitrogen fertilisers, resulting in pollution that washes down rivers and causes ‘dead zones’ where they meet the ocean. If today’s high prices prompt farmers to use fertilisers more judiciously, that could potentially be a salutary development. In addition, this is a prime moment for companies offering alternatives to standard agricultural chemicals, especially those using biology to do that which has usually been done with chemistry. For instance, Generation has invested in a company called Pivot Bio that sells an alternative to nitrogen fertiliser, using a bacterial coating that allows plants to take up airborne nitrogen through their roots.¹² More broadly, we hope this moment will help to boost more sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices across the board. The greatest contribution of the organic movement to agriculture has been to emphasise the importance of healthy soil, which is rich in nutrients and therefore requires less or no chemical fertiliser.

Historically, food shortages have led to intensified human pressure on the world’s forests, as people cleared land for greater agricultural production. With the current focus in global politics on slowing deforestation, we hope that land-clearing does not spike this time. Brazil, under its current government, has made progress in slowing human-caused forest loss in the Amazon, and it is leading a global push to set up a system that pays tropical countries to leave their forests standing.¹³

However, the rise in global heat waves and drought is undermining the effort to save forests. Even as direct human-caused losses decline, losses from fire — a consequence of the global rise in greenhouse gases — are rising. This is true not just in the tropics but in the vast boreal forest, a ring of trees encircling the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

The rise in fires is a hit not just to forests, but to public health, with wildfire smoke from Canada polluting the air in huge cities like Chicago and New York.¹⁴ The Amazon is now at extreme risk from desiccation and forest fires in an overheated climate, and the situation there could peak this winter as El Niño reaches its maximum strength.¹⁵