Unpacking Wartime Food Security and Fertilizer Narratives

As the war in Iran enters its fourth week, fertilizer supply chain disruptions and food security implications have dominated headlines in the food space. We keep hearing the same statistics and chokepoints; the Straits of Hormuz closure has blocked 35 percent of the world’s urea, the most widely used form of synthetic fertiliser and it has caused the price of natural gas, a key input into synthetic fertiliser, to double. Media outlets issued warnings of “food crisis”, “food shortages” and “global hunger”.

There are certainly very real impacts of fertiliser shortages, but it’s interesting there’s been little to no scrutiny of whether agriculture should be so dependent on synthetic fertiliser, given it’s made with natural gas, responsible for 2.5 percent of global emissions, pollutes waterways and underpins a model of agriculture widely understood to be unsustainable, unjust and unhealthy. For more on the connections between our food and fossil fuels, check out our podcast series, Fuel to Fork.