On farms throughout the USA and past, producers who’re nonetheless reeling from U.S. President Donald Trump’s commerce chaos at the moment are bracing for one more large shock from his battle in Iran.
The US and Israel’s sweeping army marketing campaign towards Iran has triggered a widening battle now reverberating throughout your entire Center East, which is a crucial hub of fertilizer manufacturing and is already seeing shuttered fertilizer plants which have despatched prices spiking.
On farms throughout the USA and past, producers who’re nonetheless reeling from U.S. President Donald Trump’s commerce chaos at the moment are bracing for one more large shock from his battle in Iran.
The US and Israel’s sweeping army marketing campaign towards Iran has triggered a widening battle now reverberating throughout your entire Center East, which is a crucial hub of fertilizer manufacturing and is already seeing shuttered fertilizer plants which have despatched prices spiking.
The battle has additionally successfully halted any transit by the Strait of Hormuz, an important maritime chokepoint and key delivery route within the fertilizer commerce, promising much more ache for farmers worldwide. Between 20 and 30 p.c of world fertilizer exports, in addition to 20 p.c of world exports of liquefied pure fuel (LNG)—a key fertilizer feedstock—typically cross by the strait.
“Fertilizer costs had been already excessive, and farmers had been already pinched. So it will harm,” Christopher Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell College, mentioned in an e mail to International Coverage.
It’s been a rough year for U.S. farmers—one among Trump’s key voter bases. For months, they’ve suffered underneath his commerce battle and risked deeper world market share losses, prompting the Trump administration to provide them a $12 billion bailout late final yr. The variety of small-business bankruptcies filed by farmers and fishers soared to a five-year high in 2025, in an indication of simply how difficult the financial setting has grow to be for farmers throughout the USA.
“The sector’s actually been struggling,” mentioned Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist on the U.S. Division of Agriculture who’s now on the Worldwide Meals Coverage Analysis Institute.
The Iran battle threatens to compound these financial pressures. By waging battle towards Tehran now, the Trump administration is driving turmoil in a area important to the fertilizer and power commerce. These disruptions are surprising markets at a particularly bad time for farmers throughout the Northern Hemisphere, who at the moment are getting ready to use fertilizer for the spring.
“A sudden drop in fertilizer provide on the time it’s Most worthy coupled with greater supply prices will drive up fertilizer costs throughout spring planting,” mentioned Barrett, who known as it a “double whammy for growers.”
The widening battle is already drawing alarm from the trade. On Monday, the American Farm Bureau Federation, one of many United States’ greatest agricultural lobbying teams, warned that extended disruptions within the Center East might have implications for U.S. food security and costs.
“If farmers are unable to acquire the remaining provides in time, we might see reductions or shifts in planted acreage and decrease yields, which impacts our nation’s meals safety and the affordability of important items,” the Farm Bureau mentioned. Whereas the Trump administration has introduced plans to assist safeguard the transit of gasoline shipments by the Strait of Hormuz, the Farm Bureau mentioned, these protections should be expanded to incorporate agricultural inputs akin to fertilizer.
“This timing issues as a result of fertilizer buying, area preparation and early season fertilizer purposes are already underway, limiting farmers’ potential to regulate if enter costs spike all of a sudden,” the group added.
For that cause, farmers in the USA and all over the world are carefully following developments within the Center East. The area is a key hub for nitrogen fertilizers—akin to urea—which collectively gasoline about half of the world’s meals manufacturing.
The Center East powers about 40 p.c of world urea exports and 20 p.c of world exports of ammonia, a key fertilizer enter, a lot of which originates behind the Strait of Hormuz, based on Tommaso Pellegrinelli, a senior analysis analyst on the power analysis agency Wooden Mackenzie. That export capability is being “held hostage within the space” because of the standstill within the strait, he mentioned.
And pressures on the pure fuel market have solely worsened the outlook for the fertilizer sector. Pure fuel costs spiked on Monday because the battle continued to escalate and as Qatar, the world’s second-biggest LNG producer, has stopped its fuel exports amid attacks through the battle.
Since pure fuel is a key feedstock in fertilizer, these disruptions solely spell hassle for fertilizer manufacturing, each within the Center East and past. QatarEnergy, for instance, has needed to halt its urea production after Iranian assaults throttled the corporate’s pure fuel output, which was a essential fertilizer enter. As Qatar has pulled again, importing international locations akin to India and Pakistan have additionally been compelled to roll again their very own fertilizer manufacturing, and Bangladesh, too, has closed four of its five fertilizer factories.
The crunch harks back to 2022, when Russia’s weaponization of its power provide and full-scale invasion of Ukraine—a significant wheat exporter—sparked a worldwide power disaster and dramatically drove up fertilizer costs, fueling fears of rising meals insecurity all over the world.
Pellegrinelli, the Wooden Mackenzie analyst, mentioned the power disaster of 2022 set off a “chain response” that noticed “fuel costs spiking, ammonia costs spiking, urea—and that every one performs into the meals manufacturing.”
As then, assist businesses at the moment are sounding the alarm for the way the widening battle might drive up world meals costs, significantly for import-dependent Gulf nations. Wheat costs neared a two-year high on Monday, including much more to these issues.
The U.N. World Meals Programme (WFP) warned over the weekend that the battle was exacerbating financial and meals pressures in Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza.
“The battle is already having fast meals safety impacts within the Center East,” the WFP mentioned in an announcement. Any “disruption there dangers lowered availability, decrease crop yields, and therefore greater world meals costs.”
