Jennifer Clapp
The biggest thing on the global food scene is the the closure of the Strait of Hormuz -
Anna Lappé
The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz -
Lisa Tostado
Closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Matthew
Why are all these food systems experts talking about a Middle Eastern trade route.
Lisa Tostado
because the region is so fossil fuel rich, mostly gas rich, and that is the key input to produce chemical fertilizers.
Anna Lappé
It is an absolutely critical trade route in the region for nearly half of the global supply of Urea.
Lisa Tostado
And that really impacted the fertilizer prices and fossil fuel prices.
Matthew
How far this goes is still unfolding. But over time, this will continue to impact harvests, food prices, and food security - and it's prompting renewed questions about the fossil fuels in our food.
Lisa Tostado
We have not even seen the full impacts on food price inflation yet. However, as fossil fuels are so pervasively used in our food system, it also led to higher transport costs, higher processing costs, higher packaging costs. Anything that involves fossil fuels has gotten more expensive because of this war.
Matthew
A couple of years ago, we made a series about this topic. We explored the many reasons and the challenges involved in moving away from a fossil fuel dependent food system. Number one being emissions.
Lisa Tostado (Ep. 3)
The production and use of nitrogen fertilizers alone contribute more to the greenhouse gas effect than commercial aviation.
Matthew
But it goes beyond that. There's public health risks, and unpredictable costs.
Raj Patel (Ep. 1)
So keeping the cost of oil - or the consumer cost of gasoline down is an integral part of the food system. But it's also necessary in order that food remain cheap, because so much of our food system is hostage to the fossil fuel system.
Matthew
Today we’re going to dig into what's changed in the last 2 years? What's the connection between the strait's closure and the increase in food prices? How are farmers coping? And what does investing in a more resilient food system look like?
I'm Matthew Kessler, and this is a follow-up episode to our Fuel to Fork series that we published back in Fall 2024 - a collaboration between IPES-Food (the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems), Global Alliance for the Future of Food, and TABLE.
Matthew
We start with Jennifer Clapp, a researcher of Global Food Security and Sustainability and IPES-Food Panel member, at the University of Waterloo. She says today’s crisis isn't a rerun of 2022.
Jennifer Clapp
It's impacting the food system, but in different ways than was the case when Russia invaded Ukraine. Because that disrupted the trade in actual grain, like the maize and the wheat that was coming from Russia and Ukraine, which was supplying much of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. But this time it's the fertilizer and energy that is being disrupted. But that deeply matters for food systems, because energy is so important in industrial agriculture. It relies so much on energy, and that was a big theme of your podcast series a couple of years ago.
Matthew
As we covered in the series, different regions and factions are having different reactions to confronting these fossil fuel dependencies. What's especially tricky is that the impacts of these global shocks are not always immediate.
Jennifer Clapp
In terms of like leading to higher food prices, because it's affecting the ability of farmers to access fertilizers, and then it's gonna affect the size of the harvests, and that, you know, takes time for that to play out in the system. But we are now starting to see food prices pushing higher according to the most recent FAO food price index.
Matthew
Fertilizer prices spiked this spring, with nitrogen fertilizer roughly doubling just as farmers were deciding what to plan. But since then, the price of nitrogen fertiliser has fallen back closer to pre-war levels, which was helped by China opening up its fertilizer exports and filling a global gap. These cost fluctuations are a symptom of what Jennifer Clapp calls a new era of food geopolitics.
Jennifer Clapp
Yeah, so when we talk about the new geopolitics of food, and by that we specifically mean there are new dynamics, not that geopolitics of food is a new idea, of course, that goes back many, many years. But just to say that what we've seen is a rise in conflicts involving major powers in say the last five to ten years, where suddenly there's, you know, this uptick in conflict, and these conflicts are becoming more and more difficult to resolve.
Matthew
Take the conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza, and Ukraine.
Jennifer Clapp
We've seen a growing tendency towards the use of trade measures basically as economic warfare, so to speak. There's an increased willingness to use tariffs. And that's disrupting trade as well.
Matthew
This effort has largely been led by the US against many countries including Canada, but the US is not alone in increasing the use of both import and export taxes.
Jennifer Clapp
We've also seen a weakening of UN institutions to address these kind of new dynamics. And then there's kind of this pullback of international assistance as well, where we've seen cuts to international aid across many, many countries that previously had given quite significant amounts of funding for development cooperation. It's being pulled back.
Matthew
Jennifer says that this climate of increased conflicts, more isolationism and less international aid and cooperation has had profound impacts on an already unequal global food system.
Jennifer Clapp
That's quite concerning, especially when we talk about food and food security, because it means these tensions are disrupting international agri-food trade and it's very difficult for international institutions to assist them and the countries that used to assist them have pulled back.
And I would say too, not that those international institutions have ever been perfect. We know that they haven't, right? Food aid kind of perpetuates dependence. And also we've seen a situation where the trade rules that have prevailed for the last thirty years have also perpetuated import dependence. But then when the shock happens, it's very difficult for the poorest countries to be able to address it because they've lost a lot of the resilience of their food systems.
Matthew
This is where the old geopolitics meets the new geopolitics, and the Strait of Hormuz closure exacerbates already existing inequities.
Jennifer Clapp
In this case it's the Asian countries and African countries that rely most on the energy fertilizer et cetera that are coming from that part of the world. And so those are the countries on the front line, and those are the countries that are already highly indebted, food insecure, et cetera.
Lisa Tostado
Since we last talked in 2024, the dangerous connection between fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, and food has become even harder to ignore. Our dependency on these chemical fertilizers makes us so vulnerable to price shocks, supply disruptions, and geopolitical turmoil.
Matthew
That's Lisa Tostado,
Lisa Tostado
I am the Agrochemicals and Fossil Fuels Campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law.
Matthew
With Lisa Tostado, I want to unpack the chain of events that starts with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and ends with increased food prices.
Lisa Tostado
Seventy to ninety percent of the production costs of fertilizers are actually linked to fossil gas costs. So we kind of have a double whammy here. The region is both a fossil fuel exporting region, and therefore the closure of the Strait of Hormuz led to a price increase in the key input of these fertilizers, and it is also a key fertilizer producer, and the fertilizers could not be exported.
Matthew
This combination of squeezed gas supplies and restricted trade routes created a ripple effect across international markets.
Lisa Tostado
Prices increased globally. So even the production of fertilizers in other regions was made more expensive because of the gas price that has spiked.
Matthew
When production costs surge, fertilizer companies face a decision: absorb the costs or pass them down the chain. Historically, and during recent price spikes, these fertilizer companies have managed to do more than just pass on costs. They've actually maintained really high margins.
Lisa Tostado
What we saw in the aftermath of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was that fertilizer companies managed to increase their prices even beyond the increase in production costs. So, of course, we would expect a certain price increase because it is more expensive for them to manufacture their products, but not to that extent. So that shows us that the market is very concentrated, and the fertilizer companies are holding a lot of power that enables them to actually profit from crises on the back of farmers. And while we do not have all the numbers for 2026 yet, it is very likely that we will see a similar situation play out again.
Matthew
So that's one factor driving up the price of food. A second, compounding factor in regions like Europe, is climate change. What economists call “climateflation” is making agricultural yields increasingly unpredictable.
Lisa Tostado
We see both the closure of the Strait of Hormuz playing out, but also what we call “climateflation.” In Europe, we had a very hot and very dry summer. The El Niño conditions have started and are expected to strengthen throughout the rest of the year and also continue into 2027. And climate impact, such as a lack of rainfall, very hot temperatures, are undermining agricultural productivity globally, but especially also in Europe, which is one of the continents that is actually warming the fastest and the most significantly. The summer drought and heat waves drove a 16.7 million ton reduction in grain production in Europe, and at current prices, that is a loss of grain worth 3.2 billion. So it's a very significant harvest loss.
Matthew
Lisa says what's driving up food prices is a combination of extreme climate, fossil fuel dependency, and corporate concentration. In response, some policy proposals are starting to surface.
Lisa Tostado
So despite the backdrop of this geopolitical crisis and the affordability crisis for farmers and the climate extremes, the EU in its Fertilizer action plan was still very much focused on “we need to improve the availability of fertilizers and we need to improve the affordability of fertilizers.” Which, of course, in the short term is a necessary response to some extent. Because farmers are locked into the system of high fertilizer dependency, and you cannot reduce fertilizers drastically overnight because soils are so used to receiving them. We were still unhappy with this Fertilizer action plan because it fails to address the root causes of this current crisis, which is the built-in dependency of these fertilizers in the first place.
Matthew
Environmental groups point toward alternative solutions that already exist, but aren't scaled to their potential - for a whole host of reasons.
Lisa Tostado
We should incentivize more legumes that can biologically fix nitrogen that would have co-benefits for human health. We should all be eating more beans and peas, and incentivize crop rotations. Like there are a lot of solutions out there. The problem is that farmers oftentimes do not have the financial incentives to implement them because they're lacking outlets for their produce or this long term transition finance.
Matthew
As the pressure to reduce emissions grows, energy companies are promoting a different path. Keeping synthetic production lines intact while applying Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS.
Lisa Tostado
Both the fertilizer industry and the fossil gas industry are promoting this solution to capture CO2 emissions at the facility level. And fertilizer companies are actually claiming to be the low-hanging fruit because they produce a fairly pure CO2 stream in their facilities that is easier to capture than more diffuse streams in other chemical production facilities.
Adding carbon capture technology onto existing fertilizer facilities does not change the fossil fuel dependency of our system. Quite the contrary. It actually increases fossil fuel use because you need additional energy to run the capturing technology and then liquefy the emissions and store them somewhere, pump them underground. And it would leave intact the current power structures, the chemical input dependency. It would not mitigate methane emissions all along the fossil gas supply chain. So there are just so many different problems associated with carbon capture and storage. And yet what we're seeing is so much money going into this non-solution. And then this money is lacking elsewhere. So it's just very unfortunate.
Matthew
Fertilizer helped feed a fast growing population. But at the scale it is used, and overused, today, much of the nitrogen leaks into our air and water, damaging the ecosystems and natural resources that agriculture depends on.
Next, we look at the global crisis from the view of Prairie Gates Farm in Sheyenne, North Dakota, United States.
Matthew
I wonder if you could take me to, like, the beginning of the season… when you were talking with your dad or anyone else involved in farm management, and you're thinking, 'All right, there's a global supply chain disruption.' What conversations were you having?
Joanna Larson
Well, at full transparency, we discussed not planting a crop. We were really uncertain in the market situation. We went back and forth about that, but in the end it came down to some decisions on which crops we would plant and wouldn't plant.
Matthew
That's fourth-generation farmer Joanna Larson in North Dakota. We spoke to her back in 2024, and caught up with her again recently. They ended up planting a crop on the farm, just not what they had initially planned.
Joanna Larson
There were a couple fields where we decided to plant soybeans that we might not necessarily have planted otherwise. But that was a fertilizer consideration, not needing to put nitrogen down.
Matthew
That was a direct response to increases in fertilizer prices. planting legumes like soybeans, alfalfa, and yellow peas that fix their own nitrogen. But while these are attractive crops, and can be well utilized as feed for their cattle, they also require a viable market. So much of farming comes down to generating enough income to survive another season.
Joanna Larson
We also did something last year and this year where we planted more acres to grass. I mean, may sound insignificant, but when you think about the fuel cost of keeping that marginal ground that's not producing much either tilled or sprayed or, you know, going across it, trying to plant it, not getting anything, so then you're throwing seed at it, throwing fertilizer at it, and it's never really producing for you. So we tried to really tighten that up, and we'll be looking at more places to do that again.
Matthew
And farming being farming, the unknowns always outweigh the knowns. Beyond the rising fertilizer costs, the diesel prices, and the volatile markets, there was also the weather.
Joanna Larson
Especially this year, we experienced a really awful drought for the greater part of the growing season this year. But when it relates to fossil fuels, just because of the situation with inputs and the uncertainty of the markets, we just chose to do less.
Matthew
Farmers are all responding differently. To fluctuating fertilizer costs, which spiked and then dropped again, and to changing markets. Prairie Gates Farm chose to use less fertilizer, and they also used their tractor less as they moved more of their land into no-till production, which also had the benefit of less labor hours. This lower input approach also helped put a limit on how much money was at risk. And for them, this transition paid off beyond the cost savings.
Joanna Larson
And having a lot of our ground in no-till, we think was really beneficial. We were able to retain moisture. Our crops look a lot better than crops right across the road from us that were conventional tillage.
Matthew
One thing I really take from that is just like trying to maximize or make the most efficient use of all the resources you have available. And maybe that becomes a little more timely when there are global disruptions.
Joanna Larson
I think it makes you more resilient when you do have situations completely outside of your control. It's one of my biggest interests in having the store and having the direct market for our products. I have seen what happens to people when you count on these markets.
Matthew
Oh yeah, that's another big change to the farm since 2024, Joanna opened a farm store.
Joanna Larson
We're still growing vegetables. Still have cattle. The thing we added is a self-serve grocery store on our main street in our small town. So we opened the first grocery store that our community has had in over 20 years.
Matthew
The store sells their own beef, pork, and produce, as well as items from a couple dozen local growers and five neighboring ranches.
Joanna Larson
We struggle to get conventional grocery truck service. So the distribution is really tough out here, and it's hard to get fresh, and it's hard to get good quality. So we're answering that problem. I guess you could say.
Matthew
Another problem they're answering is creating a market for producers.
Joanna Larson
And that has been important as a way to value add for the stuff that we're growing on our farm, but also for other people to be able to diversify their farm income as well with new crops.
It's not a big space. It's like three hundred square feet. But we're moving a surprising amount of fruit and vegetables through that little space.
Anna Lappé
When I first started talking about the links between food systems and climate more than twenty years ago, it often felt like it was surprising to people that there was a connection. But I feel like today all the climate philanthropists I talk to understand that if you want to take climate seriously, food systems has to be part of that conversation.
Matthew
Finally, I wanted to check in with Anna Lappé, executive director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food
Anna Lappé
Well, you know, from our vantage point, so I run an alliance of global philanthropic foundations working on food systems, and many of the stories I hear from my members about the kinds of efforts they're supporting around the world has been stories of what we're seeing about the resilience in communities that have been working hard to not be dependent on fossil fuel-based input.
Matthew
Right, so we've mostly been talking so far about the vulnerability and some of the cracks showing of our the energy-intensive, globalized food system. Anna shares some examples of regional food systems that bypassed some of these global shocks.
Anna Lappé
Hearing examples from partners in Kenya, for instance, where farmers have been trained on how to produce their own high-quality compost, you know, not having to rely on some like fertilizers, and then you know, when you see this global shock happen, those farmers are much less impacted. Or we have members who've been supporting work in Cambodia again producing, nutrient-rich organic fertilizer, protein-rich animal feed, using natural inputs, you know, inputs from their farms. I'm talking to you from Cuernavaca, Mexico, where we just spent time on a production farm yesterday that is producing bio-based fertilizer, a project called Sistema Bio. That's been developing this really high-quality fertilizer using waste from the farm, animal waste, and no fossil fuels. And they now have spread this technology across 68,000 farms all around the world.
Matthew
Examples like these are small-scale answers to a question Jennifer Clapp raised earlier: how do you make a food system less exposed to shocks like the Strait of Hormuz closure? Her answer is a simple phrase, resilient self-reliance. She's careful to say what it does and doesn't mean.
Jennifer Clapp
What do we mean by resilient self-reliance, it's really bolstering countries' ability to respond to these kinds of crises. And by saying resilient self-reliance, we're not saying that countries should be completely self-sufficient, that they should cut off all trade with all countries in order to insulate themselves, because that could create just as many risks and problems as being too reliant. What we're saying is countries need to find that sweet spot of becoming more able to respond to these shocks, either through increased domestic production or through forging new kinds of more diverse trade relationships, so that they can acquire the food that they need in instances of disruption.
Matthew
So not closing the borders, but being less exposed to what happens when they close. Jennifer's argument is that how countries do that matters.
Jennifer Clapp
What we've seen in our research is that many countries are saying we need to produce more food, therefore, we need to go all in on industrial agriculture and digital agriculture, and all of this sort of high-energy kinds of agriculture, that also depends on a handful of corporations that are dominating that digital agriculture space. And we're saying that's not the way to go. It actually makes you more vulnerable, because of the fossil fuel reliance and the reliance on the big companies. What's needed is a more agroecological model of production. So production does, yes, need to be boosted in many parts of the world, but it needs to be done sustainably.
Matthew
Governments can help incentivize transitions, but they're not alone. I asked Anna Lappé, who runs an alliance of philanthropic foundations, for her thoughts on the role of philanthropy in supporting climate and food issues.
Anna Lappé
In a moment where I feel like there's so much bad news coming at us every day, where the ramifications of lack of action on climate are costing lives we see every day, destroying entire communities. You know, we all know we're faced with what are they calling it now, the Godzilla El Niño coming at us. That what gives me hope is seeing from my vantage point of working with philanthropies all around the world, that through their relationships with their partners, farmers, fishers, movements, civil society advocates, policymakers, there's been such an uptake in conversation on what is the world calling us to do now and what is the action that the world needs for us to take now.
And from my perspective, it is really understanding the intersectionality of our issues. And I'm seeing that alive and well in our funders who understand that to work on climate is also to build community resilience. To build community resilience can also, by reducing reliance on fossil fuels, is also a climate action. And that there's so many different entry points and that philanthropy can be a really key lever and can be really catalytic, but we are always and only ever one part of what needs to happen of a global system. And so a lot of what we try to do within our networks and we try to support across our grantee partners, is how are we advocating for the kind of public policy system shift that makes it possible for our food producers on the land and on the water to make different choices about how they grow their food and to be able to really be supported through repurposing subsidies, be supported through different tax policies, and be supported through different ways of approaching debt.
Matthew
I really liked what you said, to make different choices on their land or in their water about how they produce their food. And what we often hear when we talk to farmers is that one of the biggest constraints is finance in the transition. So I wonder if there are specific things that philanthropists could invest in or help support.
Anna Lappé
Yeah, I think this is such a critical place for philanthropy. And we're seeing creative approaches to finance, developing mechanisms to create loan guarantees for farmers, for instance, to provide finance that traditional banks might not be willing to finance. So I can't tell you how many farmers have told me when they've gone to their local bank and presented a plan that includes organic practices or regenerative practices. Their local community farm bank doesn't understand what that looks like, doesn't understand that business plan, and won't give them a loan. So, how can we have impact-aligned investors understand the opportunities there? How do we develop and scale up that kind of mission-aligned, non-extractive financing? And I think that's a critical piece of what we're going to need to do to help change global food systems.
Matthew
Two years later, the picture is clearer in some ways and murkier in others. The dependence on fossil fuels is easier to see, but how fast farmers can transition away from it, and who is responsible to shift that transition, is still unsettled. What does seem certain is another shock will come, and we’re still deciding how ready we want to be.
Thanks for listening. If you want to dig more into fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, check out episode 3 of Fuel to Fork: do we need agrochemicals to feed the world. We’ll link to the rest of the series in our shownotes. Do you have examples to share that agree or push back on our framing? Send us an email or voice memo to podcast@tabledebates.org.
If you’re new to the podcast, I’d recommend checking out our recent mini-series on China’s food system called Feeding 1 in 6.
This series was a collaboration between IPES food, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, and TABLE. Episode edited and produced by Matthew Kessler, with special thanks to Robbie Blake, Chantal Clement and Lucia Cozzitorto. Music by Blue dot Sessions. Talk to you soon.