The Fertilizer and Food System Fallout of Middle East War

When headlines warn about the Strait of Hormuz, the conversation typically focuses on oil. But the Strait is more than just an energy artery, it’s a critical piece of food system infrastructure. With commercial transit through Hormuz halted and shipping insurance in the region withdrawn, we are entering into a fertilizer supply and price shock precisely during the Northern Hemisphere’s spring planting window, a critical moment in the calendar of the food system.

Global Fertilizers Flow Through Hormuz

Fertilizer is uniquely vulnerable to volatility in the Middle East because the world’s supply is geographically concentrated in the region. Most nitrogen fertilizer is derived from natural gas, which is used as both a feedstock and an energy source to produce ammonia, the building block for urea and other nitrogen products. This has made the Middle East one of the world’s most competitive and dominant fertilizer producers.

The Strait of Hormuz sits at the intersection of fertilizer production and transport. It handles roughly a third of the world’s fertilizers. [1] Further, the broader region, which is being disrupted due to the Iran, Israel, and US conflict, accounts for nearly half of global urea exports and 30% of global ammonia exports. [2] When the Strait closes, it constrains not only finished fertilizer products, but also the inputs and energy needed to make them. In a global food system built for efficiency rather than redundancy, these disruptions quickly spiral.

Fertilizer Shocks Are Food Supply Shocks

Nitrogen accounts for about the majority of global fertilizer use. Roughly 60% of nitrogen fertilizer is used for grains and cereals like wheat, rice, and maize. [3] These staple crops provide more than half of global caloric intake, making nitrogen availability a foundational input to the global food supply. [4] As a result, a fertilizer shock is not just a margin problem for farmers, it is a systematic food supply risk. With narrow application windows, supply disruptions now will impact yields months later.

Markets are already pricing in a fertilizer squeeze, which will not impact the globe equitably. India purchases 40% of its fertilizer from the Middle East and is particularly vulnerable to these disruptions. [5] In the US, 2025’s tariffs had already pushed up the price of fertilizer, which caused many farmers to avoid stocking up ahead of the 2026 season. [5] Today, fertilizer shipments stuck behind the Strait have sent fertilizer prices higher, which has caused shares of U.S. fertilizer producers to climb. [6] We are seeing rapid movements across markets, the price of urea sold in Egypt rose over 35% in just a week. [5]

These effects are likely to cascade into smaller harvests, higher grain prices, and persistent food inflation long after the shipping disruption itself has passed. Reduced grain yields tighten cereal markets first, raise livestock feed costs, and ultimately reach consumers through higher prices for staple foods such as wheat and corn products, meat, and dairy. The result is a long tail of food price pressure that disproportionately affects lower‑income households and import‑dependent countries.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has been direct about the problem, warning that with spring planting beginning, it is critical to secure transit and insurance for vessels carrying fertilizers through the Strait of Hormuz. However, this is much easier said than done and there are few signs of the closure lifting. If farmers can’t obtain supplies in time, we expect to see shifts in planted acreage and lower yields, directly affecting food security and affordability. [2]

Looking Ahead

The immediate task is protecting the 2026 growing season from an input shortfall. We must prioritize getting fertilizer to farmers as planting windows cannot be deferred. Even short disruptions can create outsized agronomic consequences as they hit critical purchase and application windows.

The longer‑term priority is broader, to build a food system that is less dependent on geographically concentrated inputs and short windows of action. This crisis exposes three structural vulnerabilities: (1) fertilizer production concentrated in a small set of regions, (2) reliance on chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz for both energy and fertilizer trade, and (3) just‑in‑time logistics for agricultural inputs.

If the global food system is to be protected from supply chain shocks in future, food technology is a critical solution in acting as resilience infrastructure. Food technologies can reduce dependency on synthetic fertilizer (like biological fertilizer alternatives), diversify production geographies (including controlled‑environment agriculture for certain crops), and reduce fertilizer demand by shrinking the land footprint required to produce our food (like alternative protein which reduces acreage needed by producing meat without animals). None of these solve today’s missing cargo, but together they represent critical diversification strategies for making future food systems more secure.

Sources

[1] Kpler. Global fertiliser dependency on Gulf exports: What if Hormuz is disrupted? Kpler Insights (2026).
https://www.kpler.com/blog/global-fertiliser-dependency-on-gulf-exports-what-if-hormuz-is-disrupted

[2] American Farm Bureau Federation. Middle East tensions raise spring planting concerns. Market Intel (2026).
https://www.fb.org/market-intel/middle-east-tensions-raise-spring-planting-concerns

[3] ScienceDaily. Nitrogen fertilizer shortages threaten global food production. (2023).
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231016122820.htm

[4] American Chemical Society. Ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer production. In: Sustainable Ammonia Production. ACS Symposium Series 1089 (2011).
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/bk-2011-1089.ch001

[5] Rhone, K. Middle East war disrupts global fertilizer supplies. The New York Times (2026).
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/business/middle-east-war-fertilizer-supplies.html

[6] The Wall Street Journal. Fertilizer stocks jump with shipments stuck at the Strait of Hormuz. (2026).
https://www.wsj.com/finance/commodities-futures/fertilizer-stocks-jump-with-shipments-stuck-at-the-strait-of-hormuz-89cdd8ce?st=2Nf5Kv