A little-known impact of the war in Iran: Fertilizer

For most people, the most direct impact of the US-Iran war has been an enormous spike in gas prices (a hardship that has translated into windfall profits for fossil fuel companies). But there’s a lesser-known impact that should also be of concern to us: global fertilizer supplies.

Consider:

• Synthetic fertilizers are THE reason why we are able to produce enough food for our global population of about 8.3 billion people.
• Synthetic fertilizers came into widespread use last century as part of the Green Revolution, when they, along with pesticides and better plant genetics, greatly increased our ability to produce food.
• Synthetic fertilizers contain three main ingredients, nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K); and are labelled with three numbers indicating their relative content of each. For example, a fertilizer labelled 20-20-20 contains 20% of each of N, P and K.
• Fertilizer nitrogen in particular has an enormous carbon footprint because it is produced from ammonia, which in turn is produced from natural gas through the Haber-Bosch process.
• Much of the world’s supply of ammonia and urea, another nitrogen compound, is produced in the Persian Gulf because of the abundance of natural gas in that region.
• The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has led to huge spikes in fertilizer prices, and there are fears that interrupted global supply chains could lead to shortages, crop failures and food crises.

So what to do?

• Many lawn fertilizers are high in nitrogen. If you normally fertilize your lawn, this might be a good year to rethink the wisdom of that practice. Nitrogen is a precious resource, arguably better reserved for food production than applied to a lawn, which is a crop of zero food value. Bonus: an unfertilized lawn will likely grow less quickly, meaning less time and fuel wasted in mowing it.
• Much of the carbon footprint of our food is from the fertilizer used somewhere in the process of producing that food. So wasting less food isn’t just good for our wallets in this time of affordability challenges; it’s good for the planet too.
• Why not grow a garden? It’s a great way to improve your food security and save money. Watching plants grow can be pretty good therapy too.
• Compost is arguably a better food for plants than synthetic fertilizers because it also improves the soil. So why not save your organic food trimmings and scraps and turn them into nutritious plant food for your garden or someone else’s?

And please support your local farmers when possible; they’re experiencing bitter fertilizer prices firsthand. By supporting them, you’re helping your own community, and helping preserve our capacity to produce our own food, versus relying on imports.

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