Rising oil and gas prices are not the only costs that communities around the world will bear as a result of the escalation of the Iran war. The conflict also comes to food.
That’s because the Middle East is an important hub for the world’s energy and fertilizer markets—all fueled by war. A few weeks since the American and Israeli forces began to attack Iran, attacks on energy infrastructure throughout the region manipulated markets and spiked oil and gas prices. At the same time, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, an important maritime area, has reduced the country’s exports. energy and fertilizerdrive up price for important agricultural inputs.
Together, the crises threaten to raise food prices around the world, putting more pressure on consumers at a time when global food prices are already high. plant.
“It’s going to start having an impact soon here in the United States, even sooner in other places where oil prices are a bigger part of the cost of food on the grocery shelf,” said Christopher Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University.
By driving up energy costsThe Iran war has also increased transportation costs, which will hit landlocked countries that import most of their food, especially solid food.
Many countries in the Middle East — including Iran — are big importers of agricultural products such as grains and vegetable oils, much of which comes via sea freight, Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist for the US Department of Agriculture who is now at the International Institute for Food Policy Research, said. Foreign Policy.
The region is also a the main hub for fertilizer production, with between 20 percent and 30 percent of the world’s fertilizer exports typically passing through the Strait of Hormuz—traffic that has largely stalled due to the war. Natural gas- the price it has fly in the air in recent days – it is also an important feed in fertilizers. All those forces have increased the cost of fertilizerand bothering the farmers even more when they are already there faced with a sharp edge and causing fear of rising food prices.
The agricultural industry is already warning of a global food price shock. In the UK, the National Farmers Union has said that food prices have been fixed increase as a result of war; The United States Farm Bureau Federation, one of the largest agricultural lobbying groups in the United States, has it raised concerns about “affordability of essential goods.”
And some manufacturers are starting to cut back. In Australia, which is one of the country’s major agricultural exporters, wheat farmers are now reducing their planting amid a shortage of fertiliser, Bloomberg information.
In a recent interview with GuardianSvein Tore Holsether, CEO of Yara International – one of the world’s largest fertilizer companies – said that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz for a year would have a “catastrophic” effect.
“Considering the importance of fertilizers, this is something that can greatly affect crop yields if the war continues for a long time,” he said. “This is a regional crisis with global implications and it feeds directly into the food system.”
These shock waves go back to 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent economic shock waves around the world. The invasion reduced exports of essential goods from Ukraine and led to a global energy crisis that drove up fertilizer and transportation prices, prompting warnings that hundreds of millions of people would be pushed into food insecurity. It is estimated that 349 million people were finally pushed due to hunger, according to the United Nations Food Program (WFP).
Rising prices can cause problems for governments, anger citizens and lead to political instability in landlocked and import-dependent countries, as they did during the Spring Spring.
Take Egypt, which is one of the largest importers of wheat in the world. The increase in the price of grain increased the price of bread in the country by approx 37 percent in the years leading up to the Arab Spring—fueled confusion and helped lay the groundwork for the mass protests that would eventually sweep Cairo and topple the government of hero Hosni Mubarak.
“Food insecurity sets the stage for civil war and conflict, and that’s how this can spread,” said Barrett, a Cornell University economist.
The war could shift “to other areas, where public unrest due to increasing food shortages and rising food prices leads to governments that are less responsive to the anger of their people,” he added.
Some markets are already feeling the pain. Wheat prices have it increased in Egypt, causing the government to do so restore price control on unsubsidized bread sold in private bakeries. And it’s not just Egypt that’s being squeezed, either; Food prices have been rising in the Middle East due to the conflict, according to estimates and Save the Children, a humanitarian organization.
As the crisis escalates, aid organizations have been sounding the alarm. WFP has he warned that the world could see record levels of food insecurity in 2026 if the Iran war continues, and it is estimated that 45 million more people are forced to face severe food insecurity as a result of the conflict.
“If this crisis continues, it will send shockwaves around the world, and families who are already unable to afford their next meal will be hit even harder,” said Carl Skau, WFP’s deputy executive director and chief operating officer. he said in the statement.
Countries that are most vulnerable to energy and agricultural crises are in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. according to for WFP. Among them are Sudan, which imports more than 80 percent of wheat from abroad and has suffered from a civil war that has caused great damage for about three years, and Somalia, which has been facing drought and it is reported that some food prices have already risen by 20 percent due to the Iran war.
“If there’s a disruption in the food supply, people are not going to survive this,” said Michael Werz, a food security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“You can live without a refrigerator; you can live with a half-full gas tank; you can live when your house is cold,” he added. “You can’t live without food.”
In the US, rising food prices threaten to take effect as the US approaches midterm elections, posing another challenge to Republicans as many Americans struggle with affordability of the product. Long-term inflation has been unpopular: Back in 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to food inflation that also hurt the approval rating of then-US President Joe Biden.
Even before the Iran war began, US food prices were spikingwith food shortages. Food prices in January were 2.9 percent higher than they were at the same time in 2025, and before the crisis were expected to rise 3.1 percent this year.
Iran’s protracted war will also become more difficult American Farmersone of the key constituencies of the Trump administration, which has already been dealing with significant fallout from its trade war and has called for safe passage of fertilizer through the Strait of Hormuz. But the Trump administration doesn’t seem too worried.
“Obviously, the administration takes the farming community for granted,” Barrett said. “It just assumes, probably rightfully so, that that’s a very safe constituency in electoral terms.”
