Global food supply faces a dangerous bottleneck as Iran war persists.

By ANA SWANSON

One of the biggest economic casualties of the U.S.-led war in Iran has been the global fertilizer supply.

Shipments of it have piled up on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz. In India, Algeria and Slovakia, fertilizer plants have shut down or slowed their output because of rising natural gas prices. China has restricted fertilizer exports. Australian wheat farmers are planting less, and corn and soy farmers in the United States are begging President Donald Trump for relief.

Much of the concern about economic disruptions stemming from the Iran conflict has centered on the higher price of oil and natural gas. But the cascading effects of the conflict on fertilizer supplies are growing worse by the day, raising prices for farmers globally and threatening to lead to food insecurity in some parts of the world.

Most fertilizer is made using natural gas. So the energy-rich Middle East has become a key global producer of the commodity, second only to Russia. Nearly a third of the world’s fertilizer is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, and many other countries that produce their own fertilizer, like Egypt and Thailand, often do so using natural gas from the Middle East.

Deepika Thapliyal, a fertilizer specialist at Independent Commodity Intelligence Services, a market information provider, said that the disappearance of such a large portion of the world’s supply had led to a “very big jump” in fertilizer prices. That was leading to ramifications globally, she said, with major agricultural producers like India facing potential shortages.

The consequences have been far-reaching, impacting farmers in countries including the United States and Brazil who rely on imported fertilizer. Thapliyal said those farmers are likely to face higher prices and could be forced to pass those on to their customers. Adding to the pressure: Russia, another major fertilizer producer, was being hampered from stepping in because of drone strikes on its factories and ports from its own yearslong war with Ukraine.

“It’s inevitable that food prices will go up,” she said.

The World Trade Organization, in a report last week, also warned about the risks to the food supplies of many countries. Persian Gulf states could also face food shortages, given their high dependence on imports for products like rice, corn, soybeans and vegetable oil, the WTO said.

In her opening remarks at a WTO conference in Cameroon on Thursday, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the organization’s director-general, said the conflict had “destabilized trade in energy, fertilizer and food” at a time when governments were already struggling with geopolitical and trade tensions as well as climate pressures.

“It is no secret that the world trading system is experiencing the worst disruptions in the past 80 years,” she said.

While Trump has suggested that the Iran conflict will come to a quick end, that seems highly unclear. On Thursday, Trump said that Iran had promised to let eight oil tankers pass through the strait as a “show of sincerity,” and that two additional boats had been let through as well.

But the day before, Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a maritime information service, said in a briefing that there had been only a handful of transits in recent days, and most of the ships moving oil and gas were connected to a “shadow fleet” that helps move sanctioned oil.

The limited traffic that was flowing through the strait was sailing exclusively through a corridor controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, requiring special clearance codes and an Iranian escort service, Lloyd’s List said.

Windward, a maritime intelligence firm, said Thursday that transit through the strait was expanding, but only within a controlled system with “selective access.”

A research note published this week by Alpine Macro, an investment research firm, said that large parts of Asia were most exposed to the supply shortages, particularly India and Thailand. Europe was also vulnerable. In the United States, where farmers are entering the spring planting season, the disruptions are also pushing up prices. The price of urea rose 50% in the first few weeks of the conflict, it said, and ammonia’s price rose 20%. Both are common fertilizers.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that other major fertilizer exporters are unable to rapidly scale up their shipments to offset losses in the Middle East, in part because the conflict has also raised the price of natural gas, Alpine Macro said.

Many American farmers, who had already seen their margins squeezed by tariff shocks and labor shortages, have purchased fertilizer for the season, but those who haven’t may be hit with higher prices. The United States is a major fertilizer producer globally, but it still imports more fertilizer than it exports, including from Canada, Russia and Qatar.

In an effort to help alleviate the price increases, the Trump administration has lifted sanctions on fertilizer sales from Belarus and Venezuela. Farming groups have been pushing for more, including the revocation of duties on phosphate fertilizer from Morocco and Russia.

Trump, speaking to American farmers from the White House on Friday, said the administration would expand loan guarantees for farmers and reduce regulations that he said were raising costs for farms.