Rising fertilizer costs, geopolitical supply disruptions, and energy price volatility are combining to create conditions for a food shock affecting billions of people

Introduction: The Crisis That Grows in Farmers’ Fields

The most destabilising geopolitical events rarely arrive with a single dramatic announcement. They accumulate gradually — through individual decisions made by farmers adjusting planting plans, governments drawing down strategic reserves, and families spending an ever-larger share of income on food. By the time the crisis appears in headline economic data, its roots have been growing for months or years in the less-watched domains of agricultural commodity markets, fertilizer supply chains, and energy economics.

Those conditions are developing now. Geopolitical disruptions to fertilizer supply chains, elevated natural gas prices directly affecting production costs, changing climate patterns affecting crop yields in key growing regions, and the lingering effects of multiple years of supply chain disruption have created an agricultural economic environment of significant and growing stress. For wealthy consumers, this translates into grocery price inflation. For the hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who spend 40 to 60 percent of household income on food, it can translate into hunger, malnutrition, and the political instability that has historically accompanied sharp food price increases.

Section I: Why Fertilizer Is a Strategic Resource

Modern agriculture is profoundly dependent on synthetic fertilizers. The Haber-Bosch process — which synthesises ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen — is estimated to support the food production necessary to sustain approximately half the world’s current population. Without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, global crop yields would fall dramatically, and the food supply for several billion people could not be maintained at current levels. Fertilizer is not merely an agricultural input — it is the chemical foundation of modern food security.

The three primary fertilizer types — nitrogen, phosphate, and potash — each have distinct supply geographies creating specific vulnerabilities. Nitrogen production is energy-intensive, requiring large quantities of natural gas as both feedstock and process energy. This direct linkage means energy market disruptions transmit immediately into agricultural production costs. When European natural gas prices spiked following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, several European fertilizer plants suspended production because the economics became unfavourable — directly reducing supply and elevating prices globally.

The Potash Concentration Problem

Potash — potassium-based fertilizer essential for many crops — presents a geographic concentration vulnerability. Russia and Belarus together account for approximately 40 percent of global potash exports. International sanctions imposed on Belarus following its disputed 2020 election, and on Russia following the Ukraine invasion, simultaneously disrupted supplies from two of the three largest potash exporters. While Canada has increased production, the global potash market has experienced sustained price elevation that translates directly into higher costs for farmers in every fertilizer-importing country.

Section II: The Historical Warning — Food Prices and Political Stability

The relationship between food price increases and political instability is among the most robustly documented patterns in modern political economy. When households spending a large proportion of income on food face sudden cost increases, the resulting economic stress creates conditions for social unrest that governments in affected countries are often ill-equipped to manage.

The 2010-2011 Arab Spring provides the most recent dramatic demonstration. Research published by the New England Complex Systems Institute found a strong correlation between the FAO global food price index crossing a specific threshold and the onset of political instability events in food-importing countries. The sharp spike in global wheat and grain prices in 2010-2011 — driven partly by drought in major wheat-producing regions and Russian export restrictions — contributed to the social and economic conditions preceding the wave of political upheaval across the Middle East and North Africa.

Conclusion: The Next Crisis May Begin in a Farmer’s Field

The global food system is more interconnected, and more dependent on the smooth functioning of international supply chains, than at any previous point in history. That interconnection is in normal times a source of efficiency and abundance. Under geopolitical disruption, energy volatility, and climate stress, it becomes a transmission mechanism for shocks — a system in which a problem in one supply chain component propagates rapidly into food price increases for consumers on the other side of the world.

The fertilizer supply chain is under structural stress from multiple simultaneous pressures — geopolitical disruptions to key supply sources, energy prices elevated by regional conflicts, and climate variability affecting both crop yields and water availability. That stress is translating into elevated food production costs that flow through supply chains to become elevated food prices for consumers in the world’s most food-insecure regions. The next major food crisis may not begin with a dramatic geopolitical event. It may begin, quietly, in the economics of a farmer’s planting decision.

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