How farmers are coping with a global fertilizer shortfall
Choked off shipping in the Strait of Hormuz isn't just grinding oil tankers to a halt. The Iran war is creating a one-two punch for the world's fertilizer supply, blocking both the export and one of its critical ingredients from leaving the Persian Gulf.
Disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, tied to the Iran war, is doing more than slowing oil tankers: it has cut exports of inputs critical to fertilizer production and sharply tightened global supplies. Nearly half of traded urea, the most-used nitrogen fertilizer, originates in the Gulf, and roughly one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) also moves from that region. Ammonia—the basis for most nitrogen fertilizers—is produced by the Haber-Bosch process, which combines atmospheric nitrogen with hydrogen made from LNG; so interruptions to shipping and gas supplies reinforce each other. Whether a recently announced ceasefire will reopen routes enough to make a difference remains uncertain.Plants from Qatar to Bangladesh have already reduced output or shut down, and the near-term result is likely to be higher food prices, with poorer countries feeling the worst effects. Governments and farmers are weighing short-term measures while looking for more resilient approaches.
Government actions
The fastest government responses use market tools to moderate supply and demand. Countries with large food reserves can release stocks if prices spike—India, for example, keeps substantial rice and wheat stores. China, the world’s biggest fertilizer producer, maintains large fertilizer inventories and has at times limited exports to protect domestic availability. In response to the 2022 fertilizer shocks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, India boosted its fertilizer subsidy by roughly 233% over the original budget to shield farmers from rising costs.
Export restrictions and stockpiling help domestic consumers but worsen global shortages; they are effectively zero-sum and are most affordable for wealthier states. Neighbouring low-income nations—Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka among them—have far less fiscal room to subsidize or hoard supplies at scale.
Shifting crops where possible
Farmers can reduce fertilizer needs by switching to less nitrogen-intensive crops. Legumes such as soybeans fix atmospheric nitrogen naturally and can lower fertilizer demand. Early U.S. Department of Agriculture surveys forecast a modest shift—soybean acreage modestly up and corn slightly down for the coming season (those projections predate the latest escalation). But crop switching is often constrained: in much of Asia the monsoon shapes what farmers can grow, and rice is a dietary staple, so many producers cannot simply abandon fertilizer-heavy crops.
Using fertilizer more efficiently
When crop choices are fixed, changing how fertilizer is applied matters. Globally, roughly half of applied fertilizer is estimated to be taken up by crops; the rest is lost to leaching or volatilization, including emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Precision agriculture—drones, sensors, cameras and AI-driven applications—can target fertilizer to the right place and time, cutting waste and maintaining yields. These tools can be effective but are costly and harder to scale quickly in low-income regions.
Policy incentives are as important as technology. Heavy subsidies tend to blunt farmers’ incentives to conserve. But behavior change can work without expensive gear: when urea prices spiked in Bangladesh in 2022, farmers reduced use and rice production remained largely steady, showing that better management and modest adjustments can deliver immediate benefits. As Avinash Kishore of the International Food Policy Research Institute notes, there is considerable scope to use fertilizer more efficiently without resorting to very expensive or complex solutions.
Alternative, longer-term approaches
Researchers and startups are developing ways to reduce dependence on fossil-fuel-derived nitrogen. Biological products that enable crops to access atmospheric nitrogen—microbes applied to seed or soil—are one example. Pivot Bio, for instance, has commercialized microbes that convert air nitrogen into forms plants can use and reported broad use across U.S. acreage by 2023. Such innovations and low-LNG production methods could lessen vulnerability to shipping chokepoints, but they are medium- to long-term fixes rather than immediate remedies.
Outlook
For now the priority is stabilizing supplies. The disruption has already forced plant closures and supply losses “to an extent that we have never seen before,” according to Josh Linville of StoneX. If shipping through the Strait of Hormuz reopens reliably, some acute pressure may ease. Meanwhile, a combination of government interventions, feasible crop adjustments, improved fertilizer management, and investment in alternative technologies will determine how countries and farmers navigate the shortfall and protect food security in the months ahead.