But one nation sits poised to be a major beneficiary of the crisis \u2014 Vladimir Putin’s Russia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not only is Russia one of the biggest producers of oil, but it also plays an even more dominant role when it comes to fertiliser, a crucial element in modern farming.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Russia’s ability to export is unaffected by the situation in the strait.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“As the largest holder of natural resources in the world and a top-3 producer of most commodities, Russia is well positioned for the predicted and emerging Era of Extreme Scarcity,” Mr Putin’s special envoy for economy co-operation, Kirill Dmitriev, recently posted on social media.<\/p>\n
Aid agencies bracing for spike in hunger<\/p>\n
Even before the war in Iran, the World Food Programme estimated that 318 million people faced acute hunger.<\/p>\n
The aid agency forecasts an extra 45 million people could experience food scarcity if blockades last until June.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If realised, it would surpass record levels experienced when supply chains buckled during the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The world is facing a perfect storm <\/a><\/p>\n The ripple effects of concurrent crises are leading the world on a path to crushing hunger \u2014 and the possibility of more war.<\/p>\n More than a third of crude oil exports pass through the strait, as do 20 per cent of LNG exports and up to 30 per cent of internationally traded fertiliser.<\/p>\n Attracting less attention is sulphur, of which half of global trade passes through the strait.\u00a0<\/p>\n While natural gas is critical to produce the heavily used nitrogen-based fertiliser urea, sulphur is just as important to create phosphate-based fertilisers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike the fuel sector, the fertiliser sector doesn’t have strategic reserves, creating chaos when supplies are cut off.\u00a0<\/p>\n Half of the world’s traded sulphur, a crucial element in producing phosphate fertilisers, passes through the Strait of Hormuz.\u00a0 (Reuters)<\/p>\n “This has caused pricing globally, broadly, to escalate quite significantly,” Rabobank senior analyst Samuel Taylor told ABC News, speaking before Friday’s announcement of a partial reopening<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We’re seeing changes in pricing for things like urea going up by magnitudes of 70 per cent since the start of this conflict, or 70 per cent since the start of the year in less-sensitive regions.”<\/p>\n Russia positions itself to emerge from the cold<\/p>\n Away from the strait, the spike in fuel prices has seen some curtailment of fertiliser production in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mr Taylor said cuts in fertiliser production in Eastern Europe, while not big players, also added to the global deficit.<\/p>\n He said there would be long-term consequences from the crisis, especially if the forecasted El Ni\u00f1o weather pattern brought dry conditions to Australia.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n “We’re only now seeing the final deliveries of those vessels that left the Strait of Hormuz pre-conflict,” he said.<\/p>\n “So we haven’t necessarily digested the whole consequences and whole impacts of this.\u00a0<\/p>\n “But it is very grave, it’s very serious.”<\/p>\n The situation has Russia poised to capitalise.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Russia’s export infrastructure is completely independent of the Strait of Hormuz,” Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, told ABC News.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Moscow doesn’t need a ceasefire, a military escort, or a diplomatic breakthrough to ramp up its deliveries.”<\/p>\n Prime minister reaffirms sanctions on Russia remain<\/p>\n Australian broadacre farming, which produces lucrative export crops like wheat, barley, canola and pulses, is among the sectors most sensitive to the Strait of Hormuz closure.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike in some nations, Australian farmers use nitrogen fertiliser that is almost entirely imported.\u00a0<\/p>\n The timing of the strait closure has compounded that, Mr Taylor noted, because Australia was in a key fertiliser-importing period as farmers began sowing winter crops.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why Australia turned to tiny nation to secure critical fertiliser supplies<\/a><\/p>\n The Middle East conflict has disrupted Australia’s imports of urea. Facing the threat of reduced crop yields, Anthony Albanese looked to Australia’s neighbours.<\/p>\n It’s why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used a trip to South-East Asia to secure additional fertiliser supplies from the region last week.<\/p>\n In an interview with the ABC, he reaffirmed that Australian sanctions remained in place on Russia and Iran, ruling out the prospect of easing them to gain access to additional supplies.<\/p>\n Further complicating exports from the northern hemisphere is the prospect of Iran blocking the Red Sea, which connects Europe with the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Inside the vault<\/a><\/p>\n A team of scientists on the front lines of climate change are helping nature heal itself. But as wars rage around them, it’s making their efforts to feed an increasingly hungry globe that much harder.\u00a0<\/p>\n To avoid both the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, vessels have to travel down Africa\u2019s west coast and past the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, a journey that adds about 30 days and can see costs rise by 25 per cent<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Even if we see a culmination of this conflict tomorrow, we’ve got to bake in assumptions around the impacts that are going to last for longer than a quick cessation of the conflict,” Mr Taylor warned.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The ceasefire is not the panacea that farmers need, it’s a start.”Farmers entering crisis in weaker position\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s not the first time in recent years that Australian farmers have contended with shockwaves in international markets due to conflicts.<\/p>\n In 2022, they had to grapple with spikes in fertiliser prices when Mr Putin invaded Ukraine.<\/p>\n Russian fertiliser plants are already operating at near-full capacity.\u00a0 (Reuters: Kirill Braga)<\/p>\n “This is not perfectly comparable to the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the reason for that is because this is a cost centre, not a breadbasket,” Mr Taylor said.<\/p>\n “[In] the Russia-Ukraine crisis, we saw costs go up, commodity prices go up. We haven’t seen commodity prices move anywhere near as much.”<\/p>\n That’s meant farmers enter this crisis in a weaker position. They will have to pay the higher fertiliser prices now, without benefiting from higher crop prices, at least in the short term.\u00a0<\/p>\n The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization chief economist Maximo Torero Cullen has foreshadowed that the crisis could prompt farmers to grow alternative crops that rely on less urea, opting for crops that require less fertiliser because they can fix nitrogen.\u00a0<\/p>\n That could lead to an increase in crops grown for biofuels rather than food.\u00a0<\/p>\n The UN says farmers in Sri Lanka, Bangledesh and India are most in need of fertiliser caught up in the blockade.\u00a0 (Reuters: Thilina Kaluthotage)<\/p>\n Ms Prokopenko thinks the net result will be worse than 2022. Back then, she said Russia used its supply of grains as leverage with African and Middle Eastern nations.\u00a0<\/p>\n She warns that the current crisis is again playing into Russia’s hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The food price shock from the Hormuz closure will arrive in 2027, with a full agricultural season’s lag,” Ms Prokopenko said.<\/p>\n “The war in Iran will probably end before most people see its connection with the rise in food prices in 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n “By that point, Russia will be able to position itself as an indispensable supplier that saved the world from starvation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global food agencies are holding their breath fearing protracted Strait of Hormuz blockages could cause tens of millions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[263493,7445,299615,43,9337,5575,19232,44,19136,45053,10841,143126,41,39,42,40,3281,1055,256432],"class_list":{"0":"post-617888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-fertiliser","9":"tag-food-security","10":"tag-global-food-crisis","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-hunger","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-lng","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-oil","17":"tag-putin","18":"tag-sanctions","19":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","20":"tag-top-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topnews","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-trump","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-us-iran-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sulphur](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/cee331bce8a1899e3c64e01d6256df5d.jpeg\")
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