Fertilizer blockade: Record numbers of people could face acute hunger if Hormuz remains closed
The world has become well versed in the importance of the strait of Hormuz to the world’s energy flows, but attention is increasingly turning to its vital role in another market – the fertiliser on which harvests depend.
A third of the global trade in raw materials for fertiliser passes through the maritime choke point, which is also the route for 20% of shipments of natural gas, which is required to make it.
The waterway’s near-total shipping blockade is a “food security timebomb”, the head of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, said this week, adding: “The window to avert a massive global hunger crisis is rapidly closing.”
“Fertilisers are the No 1 issue of concern today,” according to the World Trade Organization, while the UN World Food Programme says the total number of people facing acute levels of hunger could hit record numbers this year if the destabilising conflict continues.
So how worried should we be?
The Gulf is also home to some of the world’s largest fertiliser factory sites and international organisations are sounding the alarm that a prolonged transport shutdown could disrupt production and increase costs.
About 16m tonnes of fertilisers were transported by sea from the region in 2024, according to the UN conference on trade and development (Unctad). After Russia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Iran is the fourth-largest global exporter of urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertiliser.
The Middle East is also the source of about 45% of the global trade in sulphur, a key raw material for fertiliser manufacture, as well as for producing various metals and industrial chemicals.
But since Iran began threatening to attack shipping, only a trickle of vessels carrying ammonia, nitrogen and sulphur, vital ingredients in many synthetic fertiliser products, are transiting the strait to their destinations. [Continue reading…]