Pain at the pump is how Americans often perceive the economic impact of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

Pain at the plate, however, is how the world may soon see the conflict.

To be sure, the omnipresent price of gasoline seen at nearly every intersection is important. But the impact doesn’t stop there.

Because while the global focus is on oil, other resources that are part of the fuel-fertilizer-food link are imperiled, threatening a cross-continent crisis, and even conflict in some countries, that could rival or surpass the 2022 food-insecurity crisis sparked from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, the effects are already being felt.

“The ongoing conflict affecting the Strait of Hormuz region is disrupting energy and fertilizer flows, with measurable impacts on costs and growing risks for food systems, trade and vulnerable economies,” stated a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report released on Monday. The affected region is central to the worldwide supply of fertilizer as both a producer and key trade route, and the ever-escalating conflict “is increasingly reflected in fertilizer markets,” which will ultimately impact food supply and trade, stated the U.N. entity.

“Even a temporary spike in fertilizer prices can leave lasting scars on global food production,” Alvaro Lario, the president of the U.N.’s International Fund of Agricultural Development, told the Financial Times.

How temporary the fertilizer-price spikes, let alone the spiraling war, will be is unknown. But regarding agriculture, “it’s going to have a lot of consequences, and some of them are going to be long lasting, and some of them are going to structurally change the business environment,” Tom Halverson, the CEO of CoBank, a large lender to America’s agricultural sector, told moderator Jeanne Crain at a March 30 Economic Club of Minnesota event on “The Geopolitical Power of Agriculture.”

And even though many farmers may have already locked in fertilizer prices for the spring in the Northern Hemisphere, there were already economic stresses on the sector, said Halverson’s co-panelist Jay Debertin, the president and CEO of the locally based, globally focused CHS, the nation’s largest cooperative. “We’ve got summer and fall right after, and the [agriculturally significant] country of Brazil will go to planting when we go to harvest.” Enduring interruptions could have major impacts.

Indeed, said Chris Newton, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), “if this war continues through more planting seasons — like when much of the world’s wheat is planted — the impact will keep worsening.”

In response to the metastasizing Mideast crisis, the ICG has called for a “Hormuz Initiative to Protect Global Food Security” modeled after the 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative that helped alleviate an alarming global food interruption caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“By far the best way to short-circuit this crisis-in-the-making would be for the parties to stop the war, or arrive at a ceasefire, but the signs are not propitious,” reads a portion of the statement, which is signed by 30 globally consequential political, economic, business and academic leaders. “Any realistic effort to lessen the humanitarian effects of the new Middle East war needs to rely on something other than the success of diplomacy aimed at ending or pausing the war.”

That something would be like the 2022 Black Sea pact brokered by the U.N. and Turkey that allowed grain and fertilizer shipments from Ukrainian ports even as the conflict raged, resulting in relief for millions. “The dip was of particular benefit in the Global South, where a significant portion of family incomes are spent on food,” the ICG states.

A newly formed U.N. task force “should bring together diplomatic, maritime and humanitarian specialists charged with crafting a Hormuz transit initiative,” the leaders urge. “The focus should be narrow: working with all parties to develop a mechanism that allows for the unhindered flow of [fertilizer], related intermediate materials (such as sulfur and ammonia) and food through the Strait, whether outgoing or incoming.” It can be worked in a way that serves both Iran’s and America’s best interests.

After a month of war, the impact isn’t yet as acute as the 2022 crisis, continued Newton in an email interview. “But throttling shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is a much broader shock to the global food system. Shortfalls in one breadbasket’s output can sometimes be compensated for elsewhere, but there is no way to make up for everything trapped west of Hormuz. This war has the potential to cause much worse consequences for the global supply than Russia’s invasion, but that can still be avoided.”

And if it’s not avoided, the tools to respond have been dulled or, in the case of the U.S. Agency for International Development, fed to “the woodchipper,” in the chilling words of Elon Musk, who boasted last year of his government-gutting efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency.

“The U.S., along with many other traditional humanitarian donor governments, has severely reduced its ability to respond to this kind of crisis, especially where it may become extreme,” said Newton.

Keeping the emergency from becoming extreme is in everyone’s interest, everywhere — including here, where despite the productivity of our farmers, our land is still vulnerable in an internationally interconnected food system. Accordingly, on a bipartisan basis, elected officials and everyday citizens should advocate for a quick diplomatic end to the war and in the interim initiatives like the ICG plan to protect global food security.

___

©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.