International oil and gasoline costs have skyrocketed following the US assault on Iran final weekend. However one other key world provide chain can be in danger, one that will immediately affect American farmers who’ve already been squeezed for months by tariff wars. The battle within the Center East is choking world provides of fertilizer proper earlier than the essential spring planting season.
“This actually couldn’t be taking place at a worse time,” says Josh Linville, the vice chairman of fertilizer at monetary providers firm StoneX.
The worldwide fertilizer market focuses on three predominant macronutrients: phosphates, nitrogen, and potash. All of them are produced in numerous methods, with totally different international locations main in exports. Farmers take into account a wide range of elements, together with crop kind and soil situations, when deciding which of some of these fertilizer to use to their fields.
Potash and phosphates are each mined from totally different sorts of pure deposits; nitrogen fertilizers, in contrast, are produced with pure gasoline. QatarLNG, a subsidiary of Qatar Vitality, a state-run oil and gasoline firm, stated on Monday that it might halt manufacturing following drone strikes on a few of its amenities. This successfully took practically a fifth of the world’s pure gasoline provide offline, inflicting gasoline costs in Europe to spike.
That shutdown places provides of urea, a preferred kind of nitrogen fertilizer, significantly in danger. On Tuesday, Qatar Vitality stated that it might additionally cease manufacturing of downstream merchandise, together with urea. Qatar was the second-largest exporter of urea in 2024. (Iran was the third-largest; it’s additionally a key exporter of ammonia, one other kind of nitrogen fertilizer.) Costs on urea bought within the US out of New Orleans, a key commodity port, had been up practically 15 % on Monday in comparison with costs final week, in response to information offered by Linville to WIRED. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz can be stopping different international locations within the area from exporting nitrogen merchandise.
“Once we take a look at ammonia, we’re virtually 30 % of world manufacturing being both concerned or in danger on this battle,” says Veronica Nigh, a senior economist on the Fertilizer Institute, a US-based trade advocacy group. “It will get worse once we take into consideration urea. Urea is sort of 50 %.”
Different kinds of fertilizer are additionally in danger. Saudi Arabia, Nigh says, provides about 40 % of all US phosphate imports; taking them out of the equation for various days may create “a extremely difficult state of affairs” for the US. Different international locations within the area, together with Jordan, Egypt, and Israel, additionally play a giant position in these markets.
“We’re already listening to experiences that a few of these Persian Gulf producers are shutting down manufacturing, as a result of they’re saying, ‘I’ve a finite quantity of storage for my provide,’” Linville says. “‘As soon as I attain the highest of it, I am unable to do the rest. So I’ll shut down my manufacturing with a purpose to make certain I do not go over above that.’”
Battle within the strait has intensified within the early a part of this week, because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have reportedly threatened any ship passing via the strait. Visitors has slowed to a crawl. The Trump administration introduced initiatives on Tuesday meant to guard oil tankers touring via the strait, together with offering a naval escort. Even when these initiatives succeed—which the transport trade has expressed doubt about—a lot of the preliminary power will in all probability go towards shepherding oil and gasoline belongings out of the area.
“Fertilizer isn’t going to be probably the most useful factor that is gonna transit the strait,” says Nigh.
