Beyond oil: The Gulf crisis is becoming a food security crisis

Ask most people what the Gulf crisis will cost the world and they will say oil. Fair enough. Prices are the part we can watch every morning. But the bill that worries me more will arrive later and quietly: a farmer who buys less fertilizer than he needs, a thinner harvest, a family that can no longer afford a decent meal.

Two things are happening at once. The Gulf states import most of what they eat, so every delayed ship is a problem for their own tables. And the same region sells the raw materials that farmers elsewhere rely on to grow food. Block the sea lanes and you hurt the people eating in the Gulf and the people growing crops thousands of kilometres away.

On 14th October, UN Under-Secretary-General Jorge Moreira da Silva, who leads the UN task force on fertilizer shipments, warned that failure to reach an agreement could bring a food-security crisis to parts of Asia and Africa. His mechanism, he said, could start working within seven to ten days of a deal between Washington and Tehran. The scale of what he asked for is striking. Five vessels a day would be enough to keep fertilizer flowing to the countries most in need. Five ships, in a conflict that has put whole fleets at risk.

Why does this matter so much? Because of what the Gulf supplies. The FAO Director-General has said the region provides roughly 30–35 per cent of the world’s urea, about half of its sulphur exports and 20–30 per cent of its ammonia. FAO’s estimates, as reported by Fertilizer Daily, put the fertilizer trade delayed each month at between 1.5 and three million tonnes. Those are not cargoes sitting in a warehouse waiting for better days. They are next season’s wheat, rice and maize.

Farming does not negotiate. Fertilizer that arrives after the right weeks have passed cannot undo the damage, and no ceasefire can bring back a missed window.

Moreira da Silva made the same point in May, saying the planting season cannot wait. He also said that even if the strait reopened immediately, getting back to normal would take three to four months.

That gap between cause and effect is what makes this crisis easy to miss. Input prices jump at once. Smaller harvests show up in the statistics many months later, by which time the chance to prevent them is gone. Governments watching only the daily oil price are watching the wrong clock. They need to read this crisis against the planting and fertilizer calendar.

READ: Gulf countries seek alternative export routes amid Hormuz crisis

Freight adds another layer. Reuters reported on October 13 that oil shipping costs had hit new highs, with Hormuz risks among the causes. A few days earlier, the cost of hiring a supertanker to carry US oil to Asia had passed $77 million, over 700 per cent above its 2025 average. Dearer fuel raises the price of running a tractor, trucking inputs to a village and delivering food to a market. A country that buys little from the Gulf can still pay more for dinner.

The Gulf itself is hardly safe. Reuters has described the region as 80–90 per cent dependent on imported food, and Chatham House’s Neil Quilliam told the agency that over 70 per cent of GCC food comes in through Hormuz. He added that stockpiles and wider supplier networks could carry the region for only a few months. Money helps. It buys cargo and pays for air freight. It does not make a ship move through a closed passage.

There is a lesson here that goes beyond the Gulf. Buying from ten countries is not the same as having ten routes. If every shipment must pass through one strait, one port or one distribution hub, the diversity exists on paper only. Reserves give a government time, but only if they can be replaced and moved quickly.

Real food security means following a sack of grain from the foreign supplier to the local shop: the ship, the port, the warehouse, customs, the truck. If any one link fails, the rest count for little.

Nor will the pain be shared fairly. A large agribusiness can draw on stocks, credit and other suppliers. A small farmer facing a higher price simply buys less, or plants less. A well-off household grumbles about the grocery bill; a poor one skips meals. Hunger can grow even when shelves are full, because people can no longer afford what is on them.

Pakistan should not assume it is either safe or doomed. It should find out. How much fertilizer do we produce, how much do we import, what is in stock, when is the next delivery due, and can a farmer in a given district actually afford it? Pakistan should not assume it is either safe or doomed. It should find out. How much fertilizer do we produce, how much do we import, what is in stock, when is the next delivery due, and can a farmer in a given district actually afford it? National totals can hide a great deal. A tonne in a warehouse in Karachi does nothing for a grower who needs it in the right district, at a price he can pay, in the right week of the crop cycle. Preparedness is measured at the farm gate, and the numbers should be published so that farmers, provinces and traders can plan. National totals can hide a great deal. A tonne in a warehouse in Karachi does nothing for a grower who needs it in the right district, at a price he can pay, in the right week of the crop cycle. Preparedness is measured at the farm gate, and the numbers should be published so that farmers, provinces and traders can plan.

The good news is that a diplomatic answer already exists. The UN task force has designed a mechanism built on registering vessels, keeping them out of each other’s way, monitoring, verifying and reporting, modelled on earlier UN-backed arrangements for grain. It covers fertilizer and related inputs only, and it is meant to be temporary. It does not claim to settle freedom of navigation. UN officials say it was developed in consultation with the parties and has drawn strong support from member states, especially the poorer countries that depend on fertilizer imports. The idea is to build a little trust while the larger talks go on.

Governments that care about food prices should say so loudly and put weight behind it. But a protected lane on paper is not a protected lane at sea. Crews, shipowners, insurers and port operators will use it only if they believe it is safe. The test is simple: how much fertilizer arrives, how predictable the sailing times are, and whether farmers get what they need before the window shuts.

READ: Iran’s navy reports oil tanker fire in Gulf of Oman

Looking further ahead, the crisis makes a strong case for routes that do not depend on one strait. Oman’s ports at Sohar, Duqm and Salalah sit outside Hormuz and connect to global shipping, so they are a natural place to start. But a port on the right side of the map is only the first step. Food landed there still has to travel on, by road or by sea, and that takes trucks, border clearances, cold storage and money. Moreira da Silva has also pointed to attacks in the Red Sea and on Black Sea cargo vessels as adding to the pressure on global food supplies. Escaping one chokepoint only to meet delay or cost at the next is not much of an escape.

One idea that deserves serious study is a corridor linking Central Asian producers through Afghanistan and Pakistan to Arabian Sea ports, and from there to Oman and the Gulf.

I would treat it as a long-term business proposition, tested against real demand, freight rates and reliability, and not as an answer to this season’s emergency. It would need far more than a road. Traders would want open borders they can count on, transit rules that are actually enforced, fast customs, warehouses and, for fresh produce, a cold chain that never breaks. The hardest question is political. Would Pakistan and Afghanistan keep transit open through a bad patch in their relations? A corridor that closes whenever tempers rise just swaps one risk for another. Shared profit may encourage both sides to keep it running, but encouragement is not a guarantee.

If Pakistan wants a role, reliability will earn it. Food traders care about clearance times, honest charges and cargo that arrives intact far more than they care about grand announcements. Gulf partners might back it through purchase commitments, logistics deals or investment in storage and distribution that makes commercial sense, with clear responsibilities and protection against disruption.

None of this replaces the urgent job of getting this season’s shipments through. Importing countries should say openly what stocks they hold and what is due to arrive, compare it with what their crops need, and buy together where that helps. Help should go first to the farmers whose harvests are most at risk, along with sensible advice on how to use less fertilizer well. Poor households need protection too. FAO has urged governments to keep trade open, be transparent about markets and target social support. Each government panicking alone only makes prices swing more.

A global food crisis is a risk, not a certainty. How bad it gets will depend on how long the disruption lasts, what other supplies appear, the weather, the size of stocks and the decisions governments make. Corridors will not rescue anyone this season, and nobody should pretend otherwise.

So the work divides into three. Diplomats must get the cargo moving. Governments at home must look after their farmers and their poorest families. And over the longer run, investors and planners must build supply lines that can lose one route and yet survive.

In the end, the people who will judge this crisis have no say in how it is fought. For them, security at sea means fertilizer in the shop, a harvest in the field and bread they can afford. Oil prices show one cost of this war within hours. A failed harvest shows another within months. The world should count both.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.