PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE

AFP, Paris

Even as Gulf tanker traffic slowly resumes, the road back to normal food production will be long and arduous, given the war’s impact on fertiliser supplies, the UN has warned.

With factories shuttered and soaring gas prices driving up production costs around the world, fertiliser prices have risen across the board and are unlikely to fall back easily.

“If the Strait of Hormuz reopened immediately, i.e. not only a ceasefire but vessels moving, the impact would be significantly positive -- but incomplete and uneven,” the Food and Agriculture Organization’s chief economist Maximo Torero told AFP.

“The FAO is clear that damage has already been done.”

According to Argus Media, the price of urea from the Middle East has, for example, risen by 70 percent in a matter of weeks. Gulf countries are major exporters of nitrogen fertilisers like urea -- which provides plants with nitrogen to aid green leafy growth -- as well as ammonia and phosphate.

Italy notably called last week for a “humanitarian corridor” in the Strait of Hormuz for fertiliser as Torero warned that if high prices continue, farmers would face a stark choice: “Farm the same with fewer inputs, plant less, or switch to less intensive fertiliser crops,” which would reduce food supply well into 2027.

LASTING BLOW TO SUPPLIES

Torero warned the bottleneck in marine traffic since the conflict began on February 28 meant even if Hormuz were to reopen immediately “infrastructure damage is not fully reversible in the short term.”

According to Kpler data, around 1.9 million tonnes of fertiliser are trapped on 41 vessels, equal to 12 percent of all produce shipped out of the strait in 2024.

On March 2, the ammonia plant at the Ras Laffan refinery in Qatar was attacked. Plants have also suspended or reduced production in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and Qatar, whose Qafco complex accounted for 14 percent of global trade in urea.