The International Chamber of Commerce warned on 5 October that prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could push global grain prices up by as much as 80%. It added fertiliser shortages to a list of knock-on risks already facing strained food systems.
The ICC named two compounding pressures. Black Sea grain shipments continue to face difficulty from the Russia-Ukraine war. Adverse weather linked to El Niño adds a second layer of risk. Countries that depend heavily on imported fertiliser face the sharpest exposure, the chamber said, since higher shipping and input costs filter quickly into food prices. The warning did not quantify shipping volumes, but its 80% scenario assumes the disruption persists rather than resolving within weeks. That distinction matters for governments and traders deciding how far to invest in costly alternative routes rather than waiting the disruption out.
A crisis FAO has tracked for months
The ICC’s figures update warnings FAO director-general Qu Dongyu set out earlier this year. He told the organisation’s 180th Council session that Gulf countries import between 70% and 90% of staple foods. Tanker traffic through the strait had collapsed by more than 90% during an earlier flare-up. The strait normally carries some 20 million barrels of oil a day, a quarter of all seaborne oil trade. Qu identified four transmission channels: disrupted food imports, higher energy costs, squeezed farmer margins, and reduced remittances to families across South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. Those remittances support millions of households whose income depends on relatives working in the Gulf.
Urea prices offer a concrete marker of how fast these shocks move. Qu’s briefing noted urea rising nearly 20% within a week of an earlier disruption. It then climbed 52% in the United States and 60% in Brazil within months. FAO estimated that 1.5 million to 3 million tonnes of fertiliser shipments were delayed monthly during that period. Bangladesh, which sources 53% of its fertiliser from the Gulf, ranked among the most exposed importers. Farmers there face a lag between a shipping disruption abroad and a fertiliser shortage at planting time, a gap that leaves little room to adjust once the delay becomes visible.
Countries already at the edge
The human cost of these disruptions is already visible. FAO’s council briefing cited 874,000 people in Lebanon facing acute food insecurity. More than 17 million people in Yemen experience high levels of hunger. Those figures predate the ICC’s latest warning and show how fast chokepoint disruption compounds crises already under way.
Qu called for a coordinated 90-day policy response. His plan included opening alternative trade routes, monitoring markets closely, avoiding export restrictions, and extending financial support to farmers facing higher input costs. “A coordinated policy response is urgently needed,” he told the council. That line reads as unfinished business given the ICC’s new warning. Traders have so far found only partial workarounds, rerouting some cargo around the Cape of Good Hope at added cost and time. That detour can add two to three weeks to a voyage, a delay that itself feeds into the higher prices both organisations are warning about.
Gulf states are not standing still on the broader resilience question. Abu Dhabi’s Global Food Week, opening this week with India as guest of honour, has made supply-chain resilience a headline theme of its food security summit. The shipping risk underlying that resilience push remains unresolved. For import-dependent economies across the Gulf, South Asia and parts of Africa, the strait’s fortunes and the price of a sack of grain stay closely tied together.
