Comment , | 04/17/2026 : Global Food Systems in Crisis

While Germany is debating fuel rebates and rising grocery prices, people in many other parts of the world are fighting for survival. After Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz in response to the illegal attacks by the US and Israel, the dramatic consequences of its closure are already being felt, temporary ceasefire nonwithstanding: according to the World Food Programme, an additional 45 million people are likely to be pushed into acute hunger due to the current crisis. At the same time, profits of oil, food, and fertilizer companies are skyrocketing. The closure, then, reveals not only the dangers inherent in the interdependence of fossil fuels and the global food system, but brings the precise character of that arrangement into focus: a system that structurally disadvantages the Global South.

Making a Killing

It’s obvious who the real winners in this war are: according to a study by Greenpeace Germany, oil companies have been earning an extra 21 million Euros per day since Israel and the United States embarked on their illegal war of aggression against Iran. A similar situation can be found in the food sector: prices are not simply “rising”; the monopoly power of supermarkets enables them to draw huge profits in times of crisis, and it is regular customers who foot the bill.

The same pattern is at work in regards to fertilizer companies: in recent years, the profits of the nine biggest fertilizer manufacturers have increased threefold. This is, again, mainly due to their market dominance, which in turn increases dependence on fertilizer and fossil-fuel-based products in agriculture. This process is a continuation of colonial control: whoever owns the most important means of production (such as fertilizer and energy) also controls agricultural production. In this way, the countries of the Global South are kept in a relationship of structural dependence on the North. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz only intensifies this dependence.

The fact that the crisis has affected not only energy prices but also essential sectors like food production is extremely dangerous politically, but would have been easy to avoid. It is not an accident that our food production system depends on fossil fuels; this situation is extremely profitable for the oil and gas sector, and has come about as a result of deliberate policy. IPES Food has shown that food production causes 15 percent of global fossil fuel emissions. This includes the production, packing, and transport of fertilizer. The current crisis makes evident just how profoundly global food production is dependent on fossil fuels.

 Double Bind Dependence

Although the strait of Hormuz is a central bottleneck in the global trade in fertilizers — around one third of the world’s fertilizer passes through it — the impacts of the current crisis are distributed extremely unequally between different regions. The Gulf Arab states for example are not just nodes on a transit route, but also a centre of production in their own right: due to their large reserves of natural gas, they produce around 45 percent of global exports of urea, one of the main nitrogen fertilizers — which is made from natural gas. From February to March 2026, urea prices increased by 20 percent.

Yet the majority of the fertilizer produced by the Gulf Arab states is not exported to Europe, but to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. There, conventional agriculture is dominant and harvests are at risk — particularly in areas where farmers cannot afford the inputs and there is a lack of state subsidies. Countries such as India or Brazil are particularly vulnerable. Brazil, which is one of the world’s biggest fertilizer importers, obtains around one fifth of its supply from the Gulf Arab states. As the world’s biggest exporter of soy beans and one of the biggest exporters of corn and sugar, the country plays a key role in the global food system. A drop in production in Brazil will therefore have repercussions far beyond the region.

A food system based on fossil fuels, global supply chains, unequal trade relations, and the unrestrained market power of fertilizer producers and supermarket chains is a food system that is extremely crisis-prone.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where 90 percent of fertilizer is imported, the current crisis is a serious threat to food security. Malawi provides a particularly drastic illustration of the multiple layers of dependency that exist in many African countries. Over half of the country’s fertilizer imports are sourced directly from the Gulf Arab states. At the same time, its agricultural sector is strongly oriented toward export products such as tobacco, tea, and sugar. The cultivation of food staples however remains structurally insecure, making Malawi dependent on imports in times of crisis. This double integration into global markets — as an exporter of basic agricultural commodities and as an importer of both food and food production resources — makes countries like Malawi particularly vulnerable to crises. This is why disruptions to crucial trade routes such as the strait of Hormuz hit the countries of the Global South particularly hard.

The impacts of the Iran war on the food system are also felt in the Gulf Arab states, in West Asia, and North Africa. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates import around 70 percent of their food. This extreme dependence on imports has historical roots in colonial frameworks, neoliberal structural adjustment programmes, and previous wars, all of which have explicitly contributed to integrating the region’s food systems into global markets, making them dependent on external supplies. In Iraq, for example, almost all state revenue comes from oil exports, while crucial food staples have to be imported. Rice, one of the country’s staples, used to be locally produced for the domestic market, whereas today around 90 percent is imported.

The current crisis lays bare a fundamental problem: a food system based on fossil fuels, global supply chains, unequal trade relations, and the unrestrained market power of fertilizer producers and supermarket chains is a food system that is extremely crisis-prone. It is incapable of reliably providing us all with food and is plunging many regions into famine. 

Crisis-Proofing Agriculture

In many regions of the Global South, agroecological approaches have already been implemented. In Lebanon and Palestine, initiatives such as Buzuruna Juzuruna and The Humanistic Forum work with local seeds, biodiverse cultivation systems, and short value chains.

In Africa too, projects such as Soils, Food and Healthy Communities in Malawi prove that agricultural production is possible without synthetic fertilizers. Mixed cultivation, nitrogen fixation through legumes and fertilizer trees improve soil fertility in more natural ways.

Agroecology is thus not just theoretical, but an existing, crisis-proof practice. It reduces dependency, strengthens local food systems, and demonstrates that the key to sustainable and self-determined food production is not food security, but food sovereignty. Agroecology is not only an agricultural alternative, but a political project for the decolonization of food systems.

Translated by Marty Hiatt and Sam Langer for Gegensatz Translation Collective.