Today in Focus: Oil Crisis Today, Food Crisis Tomorrow? by Tom McDermott

Western media today are riveted by the immediate shockwaves of the US-Israeli war against Iran — the overnight surge of Brent crude past $100 a barrel, the tumbling of stock markets from Tokyo to London to New York, and the inconclusive scramble among G7 finance ministers to agree on a release of strategic oil reserves. These are real and serious disruptions. But these market tremors mask a more slow-moving crisis unfolding in the shadow of the Strait of Hormuz.

The story that is going largely untold — and whose full weight may not be fully felt for months — is what the effective closure of the strait means for food production across South Asia and Africa. For the farmers of South Asia the crisis is not about stock prices or pump prices. It is about whether the fertiliser and diesel they need to plant the ‘kharif’ crop will be available — and affordable — when the planting window opens in June and July. The kharif season accounts for more than half of India’s annual foodgrain production and the staple rice harvests of Bangladesh and Pakistan. It is the nutritional foundation on which hundreds of millions of children depend.

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This is not a price story. It is a supply story. The world has been here before: when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 severed fertiliser export routes, a global food crisis was narrowly averted only after UN Secretary-General António Guterres personally brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative, securing safe passage for Ukrainian grain and Russian fertiliser shipments. That agreement, fragile as it was, bought the world a respite from a food crisis. No equivalent diplomatic intervention is on the table today, nor is the UN in a position to provide the impetus for one. Absent some intervention soon, the scale of the current disruption may be larger.

The Strait of Hormuz is not only the world’s most critical energy chokepoint; it is the primary artery for global food security. The region plays a dual role: it exports 20% of the world’s LNG — the essential raw material used to manufacture nitrogen fertiliser — and ships one-third of the world’s finished urea directly. When the strait closes, it triggers a two-tier crisis: global fertiliser plants lose their feedstock, while the market simultaneously loses its largest supply of finished product. This fertiliser shock follows the oil shock quietly and on a delay; by the time reduced harvests and rising food prices become visible, the planting decisions will already have been made — or unmade.

Fertiliser and Diesel

One third of the world’s urea production normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Qatar shut down LNG production following attacks on its Ras Laffan facilities — the world’s largest LNG complex. Iran and Saudi Arabia have also effectively ceased fertiliser exports. The world has lost the three largest nitrogen exporters in the Gulf — the heart of the global urea trade — simultaneously. Qatar’s Energy Minister has been explicit: even if the war were to end today, it would take weeks to months to resume LNG production. The planting window will not wait.

Fertiliser is only one component of the crisis facing South Asian agriculture. Diesel is needed to power tractors, irrigation pumps and the trucks that move supplies to farms and harvests to markets. Diesel prices have been rising faster still than crude oil — up 22% in the United States in one week, and rising sharply across Asia. In India’s farming heartland, panic fuel-buying has already been reported in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, with district authorities issuing statements calling shortage rumours “baseless.”

India

India’s agriculture authorities are attempting to preempt a panic by citing a 36% year-on-year increase in existing fertiliser reserves and urging no panic among farmers. However, these stockpiles are a finite buffer against a rapidly deteriorating production reality. The halt of Qatari exports has already slashed LNG supplies to Indian urea producers by 40%, forcing three major plants to throttle output. The Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (IFFCO) has already begun reducing production, with industry analysts warning of a one-million-tonne shortfall in urea every month the disruption persists. This creates a dangerous collision of timelines: while the government points to yesterday’s reserves, farmers must make planting decisions for rice, maize and cotton in April and May — decisions that will be made under the shadow of a tightening supply squeeze.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh is near-totally dependent on LNG from the Persian Gulf for electricity generation, with most of its power produced by gas-burning plants. The country’s new government has already closed universities and ordered fuel rationing to conserve electricity. It has no alternative fuel source and no strategic reserve cushion. A prolonged LNG shortage threatens not only power supplies but the irrigation systems on which Bangladesh’s rice crop depends.

Pakistan

Pakistan’s situation is equally acute and in some respects more precarious. The country is near-totally dependent on Gulf LNG, has no strategic energy reserves of consequence, and entered this crisis already in severe economic difficulty. It has responded by hiking petrol prices by 20% in a single week. Pakistan’s farmers, many of them small and marginal, face the same diesel and fertiliser cost squeeze as their Indian counterparts, with far less government subsidy capacity to cushion the blow. Pakistan’s kharif crop — predominantly rice, cotton and maize — is the country’s food and export foundation. A reduced harvest this year would compound an economic crisis that is already straining social stability.

Africa

When global fertiliser prices spike or supplies vanish, African farmers — who already operate on the thinnest of margins — are the first to be priced out of the market. On already depleted soils, even a marginal reduction in nitrogen application can be the difference between a subsistence harvest and total crop failure. This is not just a market fluctuation; it is a direct threat to the survival of the ‘last mile’ farmer.

The pressure is already mounting from the north. Egypt, a critical fertiliser hub for East Africa, has seen its own production crippled after losing Israeli gas following the shutdown of the Leviathan field. This cascading shortage means that by the time the planting season arrives in the Horn of Africa, the urea that Ethiopia and Somalia depend on may simply not exist at any price. While the war is only nine days old, for a region already managing active nutrition emergencies, the silent closure of the Strait of Hormuz may already be determining the harvest.

What Is Not Being Said

While G7 governments meet urgently to coordinate strategic oil releases and soothe trembling stock markets, no equivalent emergency meetings are being convened for global food security. The crisis is being treated as a financial shock rather than a humanitarian one. There is no strategic reserve for nitrogen equivalent to the oil reserves currently under discussion; we cannot simply release fertiliser from a strategic stockpile to save a harvest.

The window for intervention is closing in real time. The planting decisions made in the next few weeks across South Asia and Africa — driven by the availability of a few million tonnes of urea — will ultimately determine whether hundreds of millions of people can afford to eat in six months. The world is watching the price of a barrel of oil, but it is the price of a bag of grain that will define the year to come.