|
Soaring oil and gas prices aren’t the only costs that communities worldwide will bear from the widening Iran war. The conflict is also coming for food.
That’s because the Middle East is a crucial hub for global energy and fertilizer markets—both of which have been upended by the war. In the weeks since U.S. and Israeli forces began striking Iran, attacks on energy infrastructure across the region have rattled markets and spiked oil and gas prices.
At the same time, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime choke point, has throttled exports of energy and fertilizer, driving up prices for the key agricultural input.
Together, those shocks threaten to unleash higher food prices around the world, further compounding pressures on consumers at a time when global food prices are already on the rise.
“It’s going to start having an impact soon here in the U.S., even sooner in some other places where fuel prices are a much bigger part of the cost of food on the grocery shelf,” said Christopher Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University.
By driving up energy costs, the Iran war has also raised transportation costs, which will hit landlocked countries that import much of their food especially hard.
Many countries in the Middle East—including Iran—are big importers of agricultural commodities such as grains and vegetable oil, much of which comes in via maritime shipments, Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who is now at the International Food Policy Research Institute, told Foreign Policy.
The region is also a major hub for fertilizer production, with between 20 percent and 30 percent of global fertilizer exports typically transiting the Strait of Hormuz—traffic that has now largely ground to a halt as a result of the war. Natural gas—prices of which have skyrocketed in recent days—is also a key feedstock in fertilizer. All of those forces have pushed up the cost of fertilizer, further straining farmers at a time when they are already facing tight margins and fueling fears of higher food prices.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/24/iran-war-food-prices-farmers-fertilizer-energy/
|
FP: The Iran War Is Coming for Your Grocery BillPrices won’t just be higher at the pump.