The Double Shock: Inside the 2026 Global Food Crisis

A rare and devastating convergence of events is unfolding. While the world focused on exploding energy prices after the outbreak of hostilities between the U.S.-led coalition and Iran on 28 February 2026, a quieter but potentially more lethal crisis was already spiraling out of control. The near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz has severed the supply lines for the fertilizers that feed half the planet's population, and it is happening just as a powerful "super" El Niño is emerging in the Pacific. The interaction of these two shocks — one man-made, one climatic — is shaping up to be the worst threat to global food security this century.

How the Strait of Hormuz Became a Chokepoint for the World's Food Supply

The immediate trigger was the military strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, which caused a near-total halt in commercial tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz . The strait is not just an oil artery; roughly one-third of all seaborne fertilizer trade normally passes through it . Gulf states alone export approximately 41% of the world's urea, a nitrogen fertilizer essential for crop growth, alongside significant shares of ammonia, phosphate rock, and sulfur .

The sudden blockade has produced a staggering price shock. Urea prices surged 46% month-on-month as vessel movements plummeted by more than 90% . The benchmark price for urea — the most widely traded fertilizer — jumped from approximately $490 per metric ton before the conflict to $700 in the weeks after, representing an increase of roughly 40–80% depending on the regional market . In the United States, urea prices at the Port of New Orleans climbed more than 25% within three weeks of the strikes .

This is not merely a trading hiccup. Fertilizer production plants in India, Algeria, and Slovakia either halted or severely reduced output because the price of natural gas — a critical feedstock for nitrogen fertilizers — skyrocketed . China, a major exporter, also imposed new restrictions on fertilizer shipments . The World Trade Organization quickly identified fertilizers as the single most critical commodity affected by the conflict .

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Chief Economist, Maximo Torero, described the supply chain shock as "one of the most rapid and severe disruptions to global commodity flows in recent times" . David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee put it in starker humanitarian terms, calling the blockade "a food security timebomb" .

Iran agreed on 27 March to allow UN-designated humanitarian and fertilizer shipments through the strait, but the global market remains severely disrupted . The supply shock struck right at the beginning of the 2026–27 planting season, meaning the production losses are only beginning to be felt at scale.

The Climate Shock Layered on Top: A Super El Niño

At the exact moment that fertilizer supply chains seized up, climate scientists were tracking an unusually rapid warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific. By mid-2026, forecasters gave a 61–87% probability that a fully developed, and potentially strong, El Niño would emerge by mid-year and persist well into 2027 .

This is particularly dangerous timing. El Niño typically reshapes rainfall patterns across much of the world's rain-fed farming regions. For the June–August 2026 period, international climate models identified a heightened risk of drier-than-normal conditions across parts of South Asia, northern East Africa, the Sahel, West Africa, and Central America . These are precisely the regions where subsistence agriculture is dominant and where a lack of fertilizer already means planting less acreage and realizing lower yields.

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) published an assessment on 8 June 2026 that explicitly connected the dots: "soaring fuel and fertilizer prices hamper regional agriculture, resulting in crop area reductions and decreasing yields" — all while El Niño-driven dryness was already threatening maize and rice harvests across Central America and the Caribbean, and Tanzania's ongoing bimodal harvest showed below-average prospects due to earlier seasonal rainfall deficits .

Historical patterns show there is typically a 6–12 month lag between an El Niño peak and the production hit . With the current event forecast to peak in late 2026, supply tightness can be expected to extend through 2027 and into 2028.

The Compound Effect: Why Two Crises Are Worse Than One

The interaction between these shocks is not additive — it is multiplicative. Farmers who already face catastrophic weather conditions now cannot afford, or even access, the inputs needed to protect what crops they can plant. The JRC noted that the combination of El Niño and high input prices is directly threatening agricultural production in vulnerable regions .

The World Bank's May 2026 food security update captures the cascading logic: the disruptions to fertilizer flows through Hormuz drove an 8% increase in agricultural price indices — and that was before factoring in the El Niño-driven production shortfalls expected later in the year . Agricultural and cereal price indices had already risen 3% and 4% respectively just since March .

The World Economic Forum warned that the 2026–27 El Niño "strikes a hotter planet already facing brittle food systems, fragile public finances, stressed energy markets and growing geopolitical instability" — and that it "threatens to further disrupt commodity markets already showing the impact of economic risks" .

JP Morgan analysts have been blunt about the consumer-level consequences. In analysis cited by multiple outlets, they concluded that household staples like bread and pasta will "barely come back down" because of the combined effects of the Iran war and El Niño . The analysts expect supply chain impacts to be felt across cocoa, edible oils, rice, sugar, and a range of tropical commodities for between one and four years.

The FAO has issued its most direct warning: if the Strait crisis persists, the result could be a global food "catastrophe" . Chief Economist Torero has clarified that the immediate crisis is not a food price shock driven by scarcity — grain stocks existed — but an "input crisis" that will make future production more expensive and less abundant, with effects that will be felt most acutely at the retail level through late 2026 and into 2027 .

What's Already Happening, and What Comes Next

The most comprehensive projections come from FEWS NET, the famine early warning network. In its March 2026 Food Assistance Outlook Brief, FEWS NET projected that 140–150 million people across its monitored countries would need urgent food assistance by September 2026 . That number had already risen from the 130–140 million projected in January .

But the FEWS NET figure only covers the 30-plus countries where the network operates full monitoring. The broader picture is worse. The World Food Programme's 2026 Global Outlook, published in November 2025, put the total facing acute hunger at 318 million — approximately double the pre-pandemic figure — with 41 million at Emergency levels (IPC Phase 4+) . For the first time this century, two simultaneous famines have been confirmed: in parts of Gaza and in parts of Sudan .

The FAO launched its first-ever Global Emergency and Resilience Appeal this year, seeking $2.5 billion to assist over 100 million people across 54 countries . The WFP's operational budget for 2026 is $13 billion — and at current funding commitments, less than half of that is available, meaning the agency can only reach roughly 110 million of the 318 million people in need .

Sixteen hunger hotspots remain at high risk, including Haiti, Mali, Afghanistan, and Yemen . Conflict remains the primary driver — the WFP estimates armed conflict is responsible for 69% of acute hunger — but climate shocks are an accelerating second engine, and the Strait of Hormuz crisis has now introduced a third: a deliberate, geopolitically-driven strangulation of the global food input supply at exactly the wrong moment .

The Outlook

There are no quick fixes available. The fertilizer shipments that would normally be moving through Hormuz cannot be rerouted easily. El Niño will follow a course largely determined by physics already in motion. Even if the Strait were to fully reopen tomorrow, the agricultural damage for the 2026–27 season is largely baked in — the critical planting windows opened and closed during the blockade. And the lagged effect of El Niño on crop yields means 2027 will likely be worse than 2026.

The FAO's Laborde, a senior economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute, has said the global community is currently facing an input crisis that, if left unchecked, will evolve into a full-blown food availability crisis by late 2026 and into 2027 . The World Bank's assessment is similar: the combination of Hormuz disruption and El Niño directly threatens an "affordability crisis" where food exists but at prices millions cannot pay .

The 318 million hungry people counted in the WFP's most recent outlook are not a projection for the distant future. They represent the situation as the crisis was already unfolding — before the full effects of the El Niño harvest failures have materialized, and before the second-order effects of unaffordable fertilizer have been fully priced into global food markets. The true toll, if the dual shocks persist, will almost certainly be higher than any institutional model currently estimates.