Politico: The world has 6 months to avert major food crisis

May 20, 2026

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is not a temporary disruption but the start of a systemic shock to global food prices, the U.N. food agency said Wednesday.

By Bartosz Brzeziński

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a severe global food price crisis within six to 12 months unless governments act quickly, the Food and Agriculture Organization warned Wednesday.

Decisions now by farmers and governments on fertilizer use, imports, financing and crop choices will determine whether food prices spike later this year or in early 2027, the agency said.

"Start seriously thinking about how to increase the absorption capacity of countries, how to increase their resilience to this choke, so that we start to minimize the potential impacts," FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero said in a podcast published Wednesday.

The impact is already showing. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international food commodity prices, rose for a third consecutive month in April, driven by high energy costs and disruptions linked to the Middle East conflict. The shock will unfold in stages, the agency said: energy, then fertilizer, then seeds, then lower yields, then commodity prices and finally food inflation reaching shoppers.

Poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America — where many people already struggle to afford enough food — are most exposed because they traditionally buy nitrogen fertilizer from the Middle East.

The warning lands a day after the European Commission unveiled its long-awaited fertilizer action plan, which bets on long-term measures like recycling manure and farm waste. It leaves untouched the fastest levers that could lower fertilizer costs for European farmers, like suspending tariffs on Russian and Belarusian fertilizer imports or pausing the EU's carbon border tax.

The FAO called on governments to find alternative trade routes to bypass Hormuz, avoid imposing export restrictions and protect humanitarian food flows from any trade curbs.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/un-6-month-window-to-avert-food-price-crisis-from-hormuz-closure/