The ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz due to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has limited the supply of fossil-fuel-derived synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, causing prices to spike.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization says reduced fertilizer use could cause a global food crisis, but the world’s small-scale family farmers—who produce most of the food people eat—don’t use much of the fertilizers impacted by the war against Iran. 

It’s the industrial farms producing crops for ethanol, animal feed, and export that use the most fertilizer—and, they use 30 to 50 percent more than they need, causing waste and pollution. 

If done right, a transition away from synthetic fertilizers could improve farmers’ livelihoods, people’s food security, the safety of drinking water, and the health of the environment.

Of course, just because this crisis is avoidable doesn’t mean people won’t be hurt by it.

Farmers Could Be Driven Out of Business

The industrial farms using the most synthetic fertilizer don’t grow food. They grow field corn that is inedible and is used primarily for ethanol, secondarily for animal feed, and, in tiny amounts, for junk food ingredients like high fructose corn syrup.

The fertilizer shortage caused by the war could be used as an excuse to put the last remaining family farmers in the Midwest out of business. Forty-three percent of these farms are already owned by absentee landlords who employ tenant “farmers,” meaning companies that operate the driverless machinery that plows, plants, harvests, and sprays chemicals all over the fields.

The crisis is likely to hit the factory farm livestock farmers the hardest. They’re already serfs on their own land, working for the dairy and egg companies and meat packers. They can’t control the cost of feed and they can’t control the price they’re paid by their corporate buyers.

Their industry is dominated by American companies Tyson and Cargill — as well as Brazilian and Chinese-owned JBS, National Beef, and Smithfield.

Congress could use the farm bill to create an organic and grass-fed paradise. Because of the stewardship of the Native Americans, the U.S. has the best soil and water resources in the world, but they are quickly being depleted by Farm Bill choices that serve short-term profits—and foreign conglomerates.

It’s not too late to turn this around, but as with everything, political will driven by grassroots organizing is necessary.

People Might Go Hungry

Actual food shortages are unlikely. Hunger is a factor of poverty, inequality, or conflict—not food availability. There’s plenty of food. 

That said, food bought at the grocery store could rise to prices that cause real pain. It doesn’t matter how much food there is if it’s unaffordable. 

Those who rely on food aid or live in conflict zones—always most at risk of experiencing life-threatening hunger—will suffer the most.

That’s what happens when fertilizer pegs food prices to volatile oil and gas markets. 

The people insulated from these fluctuations are those who buy their food directly from local regenerative organic farmers. In Africa, for example, as GRAIN reports:

Chemical fertilisers are rarely used on traditional food crops like cassava in West Africa, sorghum in the Sahel, or banana around the Great Lakes. Nor are indigenous chicken and cattle breeds fed on diets of fertiliser-intensive commercial feeds. Fertiliser tends to be used most heavily on cash crops, like cotton or sugar cane. So, rising global fertiliser prices do not necessarily translate into higher food prices in Africa, at least for locally produced foods.

Unfortunately, a growing number of farmers have gotten caught up in what GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy call the Fertilizer Trap. Farmers who use synthetic fertilizer—and the governments that subsidize them—are at the mercy of “a fertilizer cartel” that “holds the global food system hostage.”

In Africa, at least 10 countries have been subsidizing the fertilizer using loans from the World Bank. In Malawi, these subsidies peaked in 2008/09 at more than 16 percent of the total government budget. That’s $285 million or about $22 per citizen in a country where Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was less than $300!

Fertilizer subsidies were supposed to keep the costs of fertilizers low, but they ended up having the opposite effect. With governments, foreign aid agencies, World Bank loans, and international donors like the Gates Foundation footing the bill, the price of fertilizer in Africa has been artificially inflated. Again, from GRAIN:

When international fertiliser prices spike, they tend to reach their most extreme levels in Africa. During the last surge in 2021, fertiliser companies increased their prices in Africa to levels above those on international markets, and then kept them there until 2023 when prices dropped elsewhere.

The other consequence of fertilizer subsidies is corruption. The most flagrant example is Burundi where farmers can’t get fertilizer without paying bribes. Burundi spends 60 to 70 percent of its agriculture budget subsidizing the country’s monopoly fertilizer producer, billionaire Adrien Ntigacika’s FOMI. In this system, corruption pays; the governments of Angola, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia are also paying FOMI to set up fertilizer factories.

False Solution #1 – “Fertilizer Sovereignty”

The fossil fuel industry and the countries under its sway say the solution to fertilizer supply disruptions is more fossil-fuel-powered fertilizer plants—to create “local” sources that would make fertilizer-importing countries “self-sufficient.”

GRAIN calls this ploy “Fertilizer Sovereignty” and points out numerous examples where it’s proven to have no benefit for local farmers.

The false promise of “local” fertilizer is exemplified by the projects of Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Africa. Dangote said he would single-handedly end Africa’s fertilizer imports, but he ships most of the urea he produces in Nigeria to the U.S. and Brazil. What he sells locally he sells at prices set by international markets.

Dagote’s need for natural gas is driving extraction from Ethiopia’s Ogaden Basin. This only started in 2014, but it’s already wreaking havoc on the health of the people of the region, most of whom are nomadic pastoralists. The Guardian reported in 2020 (“The mystery sickness bringing death and dismay to eastern Ethiopia”) that an estimated 2,000 people have died from exposure to deadly drilling fluids that have been contaminating the local water supply since 2014.

The devastating impacts on human health from synthetic fertilizer use doesn’t stop with the fossil fuels used to produce them. 

The National Academy of Engineering calls synthetic nitrogen fertilizer pollution one of the “grand challenges” facing the world. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer:

• Pollutes drinking water with nitrates that cause “blue baby syndrome” and costs our public drinking water systems at least $4.8 billion a year.  
• Causes the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone, Lake Erie’s algal blooms and the red tides on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It also kills fish and even marine mammals like manatees.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is also linked to a host of health problems, including:

• Birth defects. Nitrate in tap water is responsible for an estimated 2,939 cases of very low birth weight; 1,725 cases of very preterm birth; and 41 cases of neural tube defects in the U.S. each year.
• Cancer. Nitrate pollution of U.S. drinking water is estimated to cause up to 12,594 cases of cancer a year. Cancers linked to nitrate pollution include colorectal, ovarian, thyroid,kidney and bladder cancer.
• Deaths from air pollution. One in eight premature deaths worldwide are caused by nitrogen oxide-heavy smog, and fertilizers are a major source of this air pollution in agriculture states like California. Poor air quality from synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use on corn alone is associated with 4,300 premature deaths annually in the United States at a cost of $39 billion.
• Less nutritious food contaminated with heavy metals.  

The current U.S. drinking water standard for nitrate, set in 1962, is 10 parts per million—yet cancer and other serious health issues are linked to levels less than one-tenth of the legal limit.  

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The EPA refers to the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in the U.S. as “Agricultural Soil Management.” According to the EPA, this “Agricultural Soil Management” accounts for 266 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMT CO2 Equivalent.) released into the atmosphere. That’s more greenhouse gas emissions than most countries.

U.S. agricultural soils currently draw down only a tiny fraction—10.3 million metric tons—of the CO2 equivalent emitted through the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. So until we end the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, it will be nearly impossible to restore our soils’ and croplands’ capacity to sequester carbon.

False Solution #2 – Artificial Intelligence and Genetically Modified Microbes

We don’t need industry’s false solutions: “biostimulants” (genetically modified soil microbes to replace the abundant natural microbes easily cultivated through regenerative organic practices) or “precision agriculture” (the idea that Ai-driven data firms like Palantir will make sure farmers apply the “right amount” of fertilizer—with no promise to actually reduce its use).

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s policy recommendations for how to avert a fertilizer-shortage food crisis are suspiciously similar to what’s in the 2026 House Farm Bill (even after the Luna Amendment):

Section 10201 exempts so-called “plant biostimulants” from Environmental Protection Agency regulation.

As GRAIN points out, these bioinputs are “agribusiness’s new toxic trap.” 

Bioinputs should be derived from beneficial soil microorganisms and other natural ways to support and protect plant growth, but when industry uses the term, it’s really just a new name for the same old GMOs.

For example, BASF managed to get its Poncho/VOTiVO insecticidal seed treatment registered as a “biostimulant” even though it’s just the combination of a neonicotinoid pesticide that’s toxic to pollinators and a dangerous genetically engineered microbe (Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt).

This Farm Bill section would go even further than what BASF has pulled off so far, completely deregulating “biostimulants.”

The 2026 House Farm Bill also lets Bayer and its business partners break into programs intended to promote regenerative agriculture. The word “regenerative” doesn’t appear in this Farm Bill even once, while the catch phrase Bayer came up with for its business model, “precision agriculture” is in the bill dozens of times. Just like “precision fermentation” is genetically modified microbes spitting out GMO proteins, “precision agriculture” means the same old GMOs, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers, only with big tech’s artificial intelligence making the decisions instead of farmers.

Under the guise of “precision agriculture,” the 2026 House Farm Bill lets the largest most industrialized farms get payments from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program.

“Precision agriculture” is defined as “managing, tracking, or reducing crop or livestock production inputs, including seed, feed, fertilizer, chemicals, water, and time, at a heightened level of spatial and temporal granularity and biological targeting to improve efficiencies, reduce waste, and maintain environmental quality.” Notice the way that’s worded. Big tech pitches farmers with the promise that investing in their tools will mean spending less money on pesticides and fertilizers, but that’s not a requirement here. The bill says “precision agriculture” is about “managing, tracking, OR reducing … inputs.”

With the addition of “precision agriculture,” EQIP would be stretched to the breaking point, but the 2026 House Farm Bill wouldn’t expand its budget. On the contrary, EQIP would be cut by $1 billion. With big tech’s “managing” and “tracking” hoovering up scarce resources, there will be far less EQIP money for regenerative agriculture practices. Not a new problem, unfortunately. Even without “precision agriculture,” most EQIP dollars go to helping factory farms manage their manure lagoons.

The Real Solution: Growing More Food with Less Synthetic Fertilizers

If you ask the U.S. companies that produce synthetic nitrogen fertilizer—CF Industries Holdings, Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, and Terra Nitrogen Company—they’ll tell you farmers can’t grow food without it.

But organic farmers grow food just fine without synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

And scientists say we must drastically reduce its use.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2026 report, “Less Fertilizer, Better Outcomes: USDA Conservation Programs Benefit Both Farmers and the Planet”:

Every year, US farmers apply between 30 and 50 percent more synthetic nitrogen fertilizer than their crops can actually absorb, and the excess that runs off farm fields does harm to people, ecosystems, and the climate.

Voluntary conservation programs administered by the US Department of Agriculture offer scientifically proven ways for farmers to break this cycle of fertilizer dependency, but they are not sufficiently funded to meet demand, and disadvantaged farmers often can’t afford the up-front investment. The next food and farm bill should make these programs accessible to more farmers, and prioritize practices that improve soil health without chemicals—which will also reduce the emissions that drive climate change.

If you agree, tell Congress: The food crisis is avoidable! Farmers can grow more food with less synthetic fertilizer!