As the Strait of Hormuz blockade continues, a food crisis looms

Despite assumptions to the contrary, the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz endures. US President Donald Trump might have declared a ceasefire, but Iran is still attacking and seizing ships. One blockade has been blockaded by another blockade. Markets meanwhile are stuck, like ships in the strait.

But some facts are clear. Russell Hardy, the chief executive of Vitol, one of the world’s largest energy and commodity trading houses, warned recently that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz would drain roughly one billion barrels of oil from global supply even if the critical passage reopened tomorrow. These numbers need to be put in perspective. The world consumes roughly 100 million barrels of oil a day, and before the strait was closed about 20 million barrels used to pass through it.

Two months into this disruption, the consequences are already spreading. It has become clear that benchmark crude and commodity prices are poor guides to what buyers are actually paying. The premiums charged for delivery to specific ports, particularly in Asia – on top of the benchmark – have blown out to levels which traders privately describe as extraordinary. These are not numbers that appear on Bloomberg terminals. But they are very real to the refiners and distributors paying them, and will become real in due course to the consumers ultimately picking up the bill.

The geography of Gulf energy exports is critical. Most oil and gas that passes through the strait is destined for Asia, not the West. Countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines are already experiencing shortages, rationing and what economists call “demand destruction” – people and businesses simply going without.

The long-term effects on energy and commodity markets of the strait being closed for the past two months will be profound. Equity markets are completely unworried by all of this. The implicit assumption embedded in asset prices is clear enough; the strait will reopen soon, and when it does, everything will return to normal.

Yet, the most alarming dimension of this crisis is not energy. It is food.

More than an energy crisis

Most imagine that farmers in the developing world rely on organic inputs: manure, compost, crop rotation. But this was only true until the middle of the 20th century. Modern agriculture is essentially an energy industry. The Green Revolution, which celebrated the transformation of crop yields from the 1950s onwards, delivered its gains through a Faustian pact with the fossil fuel industry.

High-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, the staples that feed billions, require large and repeated application of synthetic nitrogen-based fertilisers. Those fertilisers – such as urea and ammonium nitrate – are derived principally from natural gas. Thanks to this supercharging of yields, India more than doubled its wheat output between the mid-1960s and early 1970s.

The risks of this dependency by global agriculture on petrochemicals, particularly in the Global South, are now being tested. As oil and gas prices have risen steeply amid the US-Israeli war on Iran and a significant part of the global fertiliser trade has been brought to a standstill, its vulnerabilities have been made clear. After only seven weeks, food shortages and even famine are now looking more likely for millions of people across vulnerable countries in Africa and Asia.

The role of the Gulf states is particularly critical. In recent years these economies have become far more than mere oil and gas exporters. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have built significant chemical industries, exploiting their abundant gas reserves to become among the world’s largest exporters of nitrogen-based products. The old image of Gulf monarchies being inert rentier states is obsolete. These countries now sit at the intersection of several layers of the global food supply chain; they are energy producers, fertiliser and chemical manufacturers, and serve as the logistical supply hubs through which agricultural commodities flow to the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Spiralling costs

The numbers are already turning grim. Recent data from the World Bank capture these links between energy and food sharply, showing that in March the organisation’s energy price index rose 41.6%, led by a 59.4% increase in European natural gas and a 45.8% rise in Brent crude oil. In the same month food prices rose 2.7% and fertiliser prices 26.2%. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that, if the crisis persists, global fertiliser prices could average 15% to 20% higher in the first half of 2026 than a year ago.

Britain’s Food & Drink Federation has already warned that food inflation could reach 10% by the end of 2026, sharply higher than its earlier forecast of 3.2%. Across Europe, nitrogen fertiliser prices have already risen by more than 20% since March. It is likely to be even higher in developing countries, especially those with greater import dependence. South Africa, for example, manufactures some fertiliser domestically at the Sasol Secunda plant, but relies heavily on imported ammonia, phosphates and potassium – all of which flow through heavily disrupted supply chains.

These dynamics differ from early commodity shocks in one important respect. The food price crises of 2007-2008 and 2022 were driven by energy costs feeding through to freight and fertiliser prices, and supply shortages of Ukrainian wheat. This meant they were painful, but recoverable. The current crisis is more structural; the region that is effectively blocked off from global markets is critical not only for the energy inputs to food production but also for the fertiliser outputs, the shipping corridors and even the re-export hubs through which agricultural commodities reach their final markets. A shock of this magnitude in the Gulf is likely to cascade across multiple layers of the food system simultaneously.

What markets are missing

Everyone recognises that wider financial markets are pricing in the strait opening soon. But the reality is that no one knows when this will happen. Scenarios multiply and cancel themselves out; what the Americans might be able to live with the Israelis will not tolerate; what the Iranians will countenance, the Gulf states cannot accept; what the Gulf states need, Iran finds unconscionable. To use dreadful Pentagon parlance, the “geometry” of the negotiations is not converging towards an obvious solution.

But what is absolutely clear is that if the strait remains closed for months rather than weeks the consequences for food security, particularly in vulnerable countries across sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and Southeast Asia, will be severe. Fertiliser shortages translate into lower yields, typically with a lag of one or two seasons. This lag is already running.

Financial markets, for now, are betting on a swift agreement and early resolution. They may be right. But the cost of them being wrong will not be calculated by mere portfolio losses. It will be hunger. DM