The impending global food shock is preventable

FOUR YEARS ago the world averted a humanitarian catastrophe—or seemed to. One giant cereal producer, Russia, invaded another, Ukraine. Fears of food shortages spread in poor countries unable to pay suddenly astronomical prices for wheat and other staples. Then the two foes agreed to let grain-laden ships sail from their Black Sea ports. Markets calmed; hunger vanished from the headlines. But not from destitute lives. The Ukraine war is thought to have killed more people in the global south than on the battlefields of eastern Europe.

Now a war in the Gulf threatens a similar slow-motion calamity outside the theatre of conflict. The poor in Africa and Asia are already growing less on their plots and skipping meals. The UN’s World Food Programme warns that if the Strait of Hormuz is not open by mid-year, the more than 300m people who already struggle to feed themselves will be joined by another 45m. The world could help avert this outcome. The tragic reality is that it won’t.

Although Iran and its neighbours are not big food exporters, they are a critical link in agricultural supply chains. The blockaded region sells 30% of globally traded fertiliser, 20% of liquefied natural gas (used as feedstock in making fertiliser and as fuel for cooking) plus 15% of oil (needed to power farm equipment). If the nearly 2m tonnes of fertiliser stuck behind the blockaded strait does not start moving soon, many crops will not be nourished at the right time in the growing season. Yields will plummet, prices will rise and many poor city-dwellers will go hungry.

Fertiliser shortages will hurt the poor world’s agribusiness more than its subsistence farmers, who use little of the stuff anyway. But countrysides will bear the brunt of a geophysical disaster that is about to compound the geopolitical one. The world is due to be hit by an El Niño, a weather pattern that temporarily warms the planet every few years and creates a pattern of droughts and floods across the world. This one could be especially powerful.

Though the gentler effects of El Niño outside the tropics can help farmers there, in poorer places its consequences are all too often bad. Argentina and Uruguay tend to get too much rain; southern Africa, India and South-East Asia too little. The “super” El Niño in 2015-16 caused food-crop production to decline by up to two-thirds in some southern African countries. The last El Niño, in 2023-24, brought the worst drought in 100 years to the region as a whole. Crops failed and thousands of cattle and other livestock died. According to the World Bank, more than 30m people required food assistance.

The true strength of this year’s El Niño will not become clear until the northern summer, but one thing is already certain. Super or not, it will layer on top of accelerating global warming, which makes dry regions drier and wet ones wetter. It will thus stack extremes on top of extremes—of weather and of poverty.

The worst could yet be averted. Much of the needed fertiliser already exists and there is still time, in some regions, to apply it to this year’s crops. Though no amount of urea can save a crop ripped out by a landslide or singed by drought, careful application can limit some of El Niño’s ravages. The world is not short of calories, either. Lots of the corn (maize) that is converted into ethanol for cars could instead feed humans. And even as rich countries’ governments spend money to spare their citizens from the fuel shock caused by the war in the Gulf, they have the means to pay for food assistance in the poor world.

So much for the theory. Iran should allow fertiliser to pass through the Strait of Hormuz; America should not blockade urea shipments from Iran. Tragically, neither shows any inclination to do so. High petrol prices make biofuel more attractive to farmers, not less. And rich countries are in a selfish mood. Failure to act thus looks baked in. In the face of an avoidable disaster, that is shameful. ■