Just looks like a click farming site that targets left-libertarians.
She stands in a supermarket aisle, looking at the price of baby formula.
A notification flashes on her phone. Headlines about Trump. Iran. Threats. Escalation. She reads it quickly, almost without thinking.
Then she looks back at the shelf.
Her mind starts connecting things.
Like, this isn’t journalism it’s prose
I mean the point it makes is still valid. There’s almost certainly going to be a farming crisis, and there’s no way around that now.
There’s almost certainly going to be a farming crisis
Over a long enough timeline, sure.
We’ve already seen egg prices skyrocket thanks to bird flu and beef production sag due to drought and Texas Cattle Fever. I have no doubt we’ll continue to see agricultural productivity drag as ecological conditions worsen.
But the fixation on the Straight of Hormuz as a but-for cause to a global agricultural crash jumps the gun for a host of reasons. The most notable of which is that we heavily overproduce agricultural goods and end up subsidizing their wholesale prices. The biggest problems populations have with famine in the modern era is of storage, distribution, and financialization, not raw productivity. A hiccup in the supply of nitrogen rich fertilizer isn’t going to empty anyone’s shelves.
It’s not gonna be that long. The planting season is happening right now, and we’ll see the effects of that by summer and fall. And if there’s still shortage by next planting season, then we’re entering a structural shortage. The LNG plants are going to take years to repair, so this isn’t a blip as you put it.
And you’re right that some regions like the west overproduce and throw out food. Here, it will be possible to be less wasteful if the governments step in. However, some developing countries will have genuine shortages.
The planting season is happening right now
Which means the planting supplies were lined up months ago. This will be a next-year thing if it cannot be corrected for in time.
The LNG plants are going to take years to repair
One section of one country’s exports in a global economy. And that’s ignoring the fact that the Straight isn’t shut down for everyone. The IRGC is negotiating passage for a bunch of unaligned states. Pakistan is going to get their fertilizer. China and Russia will get their supplies. Italy and Spain will be fine. It’s the US-Israel block that’s in trouble. And given how much fertilizer the US produces domestically, not even that much trouble.
However, some developing countries will have genuine shortages.
The biggest threat to developing countries is western intervention. The famines happening along the Horn of Africa are the direct result of US, Israeli, and Qatari backed military interventions.
No, nitrogen wasn’t lined up. This is a widely reported problem. It’s not a type of fertilizer that gets stored. And it’s not one section of one country, it’s majority of Gulf states at this point which accounts for roughly 20% of global supply. The issue isn’t even passage at this point, it’s that production has been shut down.
Meanwhile, US farmers are already seeing fertilizer shortages and fuel prices going up. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/23/business/fertilizer-prices-iran-war-farmers
Western interventions are a whole separate problem for developing countries. That doesn’t detract from food production issues in any way.
I’m not sure how the supply chain works but if we’re terrible at distributing resources now (because wealthy countries get a lot and poor countries don’t) I worry there will be even less for the poorest food importers
remember… you didn’t see shit when people start taking back from these corporations. they are spineless and caused this so it’s only right that the world take back what’s rightfully ours.
“I don’t care, do you?” -written on the back of First Lady Melania Trump’s jacket, some time during her husband’s first excursion in the Oval Office
Other sources that confirm the content of the article:
- https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/hormuz-shutdown-blocks-energy-and-crop-nutrients-rattling-agriculture-markets-and-supply-chains/3856923
- https://www.turkishagrinews.com/hormuz-shutdown-blocks-energy-and-crop-nutrients-rattling-agriculture-markets-and-supply-chains/
- https://unctad.org/news/gas-grain-fertilizer-disruptions-raise-risks-food-security-and-trade
I can’t get view it. Any statement on how bad it is?
Spring planting was about to begin. Then costs jumped. Fertilizer more expensive. Fuel more expensive. One reason: Hormuz was shut.
…
The real pressure builds somewhere else. Fertilizer.
Strip it down, and the system depends on three things: nitrogen, phosphate, potash. The Gulf plays a central role, especially in the first two. Around 50% of globally traded ureapasses through that region, moving mostly by sea. One company alone, Qatar Fertilizer, produces roughly 5.6 to 6 million tons a year, about 14% of global supply. That flow depends on open routes.
…
A core ingredient in fertilizer, heavily dependent on natural gas. The Gulf produces around 30% of global ammonia, and that production relies on gas flows now under pressure. About 20% of global LNG exportspass through this region. Qatar alone accounts for roughly 19% of the market.
…
Phosphate follows the same logic. Its production depends on sulfur, and about 45% of global sulfur exports move through Hormuz. Disrupt that flow, and prices react quickly. Farmers are left with difficult choices. Use less fertilizer and accept lower yields, or stop planting if the economics no longer hold.
…
Pull the camera back a little further, and the picture widens. It doesn’t stop with food and energy. Qatar produces about 63 million cubic meters of helium a year, nearly a third of global supply. Helium is used in semiconductors. In MRI machines. Disrupt that, and the effects don’t stay in tech. They move into healthcare. The same applies to petrochemicals used in pharmaceuticals. Any shock in oil and gas runs straight into that sector as well.
…
Just as if there was a reason the US didn’t attack Iran directly in the last decades eventhough the theocracy dethroned their puppet…
Well, yeah… Oil is the CURRENT crisis
It’s all part of the same crisis really, there are many dimensions to it.
Such is the beauty of dialectics.
