Twenty years ago, the world was in the throes of rising oil prices. As the cost of fuel climbed, so, too, did the cost of food production and distribution. This set the stage for a global food price crisis that upended the lives of hundreds of millions of people.¹

Today, in 2026, a similar scenario is unfolding. The Israeli-US war on Iran has triggered a massive spike in fossil fuel prices. Because this is playing out in the Persian Gulf, fuel shipments from one of the biggest sources of oil and gas on the planet have stopped altogether. Both fuel and fertilisers used for food production are deeply affected. Farmers from India to Brazil are being forced to plant less or cut back on fertiliser use, raising fears about the consequences later this year.² But already, food prices are shooting up in many countries due to the increased costs of transportation, cooking and packaging. In Tanzania, for instance, prices in April were up 20% for cooking oil, 17% for potatoes, 50% for green banana, 20% for bread and 18% for onions.³ The worst will come months from now, when today’s cuts in planting or fertiliser use will show up as reduced harvests. The situation will be particularly bad for crops like rice, maize and wheat that have been bred to rely heavily on chemical fertilisers through decades of green revolution-style plant breeding programmes.

There are even more parallels between today’s looming food crisis and the one of two decades ago. With the previous one, the impacts of high fuel prices were greatly amplified by extreme weather events, especially floods and droughts. Today, the world is bracing for a “Godzilla” El Niño to cause severe droughts and flooding later this year and into the next. Back in 2008, financial speculators and corporations dominating the seeds, fertiliser, commodity trading and supermarket sectors used their power to extract mega profits and passed the costs on to farmers and consumers.⁴