Block the Strait, Starve the World

Most people understand the Strait of Hormuz as an oil story. Tankers, petrol prices, geopolitical brinkmanship. Petrol and diesel drivers feel it at the pump. But something my friend Allan Behm from the Australia Institute recently reminded me is that, if the Strait and the Middle East stay disrupted, the real story is not just energy. It’s food. Allan prompted me to do a deeper dive and here’s what I found.

Modern agriculture doesn’t run on soil, sunlight and rain alone. It runs on chemistry. And a huge part of that chemistry flows through the Persian Gulf. The Gulf is a global hub for fertiliser and its key inputs: ammonia, urea, phosphates, and sulfur. Around a third of globally traded fertiliser moves through the Strait of Hormuz. Disrupt that flow, and you don’t just raise prices - you destabilise global food production.

At first, the shock results in a price spike. Fertiliser costs rise. Shipping slows. Aid becomes more expensive. Then comes a lag (we’re in that now). Farmers make decisions that shape harvests months from now. And when fertilisers becomes scarce or unaffordable, they use less, plant less, or switch crops. The next harvest thus comes in smaller.

And this is the critical point: fertiliser shocks today become food shortages tomorrow. Wealthy countries like Australia will mostly cope. Inflation will cause some cost-of-living impacts, but we can subsidise, stockpile, and outbid others. But the countries and peoples already on the edge can’t.

Globally, the baseline is already dire. Around 735 million people are chronically undernourished, and more than 2 billion people experience moderate or severe food insecurity. That’s before any fertiliser shock from a blocked Strait. In Africa, for example, this shock will land on top of drought, conflict, and existing hunger. Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia are already stretched to breaking point.

So when fertilisers stop arriving, or double in price, the consequences will cascade. Yields will fall. Food prices will rise. Developing country governments won’t be able to afford imports. Aid agencies will deliver less. And millions of poor families will simply go without. This is how Donald Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war in the Middle East will become hunger and starvation for millions of people. Not through headlines or midnight social media rants, but through absence. Absence of fertiliser. Absence of yield. Absence of food.

There’s a cruel asymmetry to this. The people who are about to suffer most are not those making the decisions about war. They’re farmers choosing whether they can afford a bag of urea. Parents skipping meals. Communities already hit by climate change, now hit again by Trumpism and geopolitics.

Some Australians might assume the aid system will step in. But that safety net is fraying. Australia’s aid program is at historic lows of less than 0.2% of national income. For every $1,000 spent in our economy, less than $2 goes to offical aid. The United States has effectively dismantled large parts of its aid effort. And European countries are cutting aid to fund increased defence spending. Even if the money were there, it would be chasing scarcer and more expensive food, because fertiliser shortages mean lower global production.

And that’s why we need to be honest with ourselves: famine won’t an accident. It will be the foreseeable consequence of reckless political decisions - of escalation, of treating chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz as leverage rather than lifelines.

The global food system feeds over eight billion people. But it’s also extraordinarily fragile. Block one narrow stretch of water, and that system starts to break down. Not everywhere. Not immediately. But enough. Enough to push millions into hunger and starvation.

Aussies might be measuring the consequences of Trump’s recklessness at the bowser. But in months to come, some of the poorest people on Earth will be measuring it in empty plates.

Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh / Associated Press.