The war in the Middle East threatens to unleash a global food crisis, with experts forecasting the impact could be worse than that sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large share of the world’s fertilizer passes, is putting farmers at risk of missing the spring planting season.
Higher energy prices are also raising the costs of storing and cooking food, and poorer countries are bearing the brunt: The World Food Programme warned that as many as 45 million more people could fall into acute food insecurity if the conflict doesn’t end soon. “It’s setting up to be a far worse situation” than 2022, an expert told the Financial Times.
