When the war in Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz in late February, the world's attention went to oil prices. However, equally consequential is how the crisis impacted the global fertilizer market, which will inevitably affect food prices, planting decisions and hunger for the rest of 2026 and beyond.
Roughly half of global food production depends on nitrogen fertilizer, the only nutrient that crops require every growing season. The supply chain behind it begins with natural gas. The Haber-Bosch process extracts hydrogen from methane and combines it with nitrogen from the air to produce ammonia, the foundation of urea and most other nitrogen fertilizers.
A third of its global trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz, cut off overnight when it closed, sending urea prices surging from around $490 to over $700 per tonne.
Major exporters, including China and Russia, then restricted exports to protect their domestic supply, further tightening the market. Fertilizer plants across South Asia, which depend on imported Gulf natural gas as their feedstock, also began shutting down.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/05/iran-war-fertilizer-biochar/
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