318 Million People Face Hunger. Two Famines Are Confirmed. And the Fertilizer Just Stopped.

The World Food Programme just released its 2026 Global Outlook. 318 million people face crisis-level hunger. That's more than double the number from 2019.

Two confirmed famines are happening right now — in Gaza and Sudan.

And then the war in Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz.

About 25% of the world's fertilizer passes through that strait. It's not passing through anymore.

The collision nobody's watching

War creates hunger. We know that. Conflict drives 69% of acute food insecurity, according to the WFP.

But here's what makes this different: war is now creating hunger faster than aid can reach it. And the same war that's dominating every headline is about to make it exponentially worse.

The Strait of Hormuz carries a third of global seaborne fertilizer. Nearly half of the world's urea. 30% of its ammonia. All of it from the Persian Gulf.

Ships aren't making it through anymore. Urea prices jumped $210 per tonne in two weeks — from $487 before the attacks on Iran to $700 now. That's a 44% spike.

Svein Tore Holsether, CEO of Yara International (the world's largest fertilizer producer), put it bluntly: "If the Strait of Hormuz was closed for a year it would be catastrophic."

He wasn't exaggerating. For some crops, no fertilizer means a 50% yield drop in the first harvest. European summer crops — early potatoes, for example — could be cut in half.

The spring planting season is now

Here's the problem: farmers are making planting decisions right now. Spring planting season in the Northern Hemisphere is measured in weeks, not months.

U.S. farmers were already dealing with tariff shocks and shrinking margins. Corn prices are down 50% since 2022. Soybeans down 40%. Now fertilizer costs just jumped 30%.

Seth Meyer, director of the University of Missouri's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, told Fortune: "A bad decision this year could be pretty costly."

Some farmers pre-purchased fertilizer months ago. They're safe for now. Others didn't. They're stuck choosing between:

• Buying fertilizer at inflated prices they can't afford
• Skipping fertilizer and accepting lower yields
• Switching to crops that need less fertilizer (soybeans instead of corn)

Corn accounts for 95% of U.S. grain and feed. If farmers pivot away from it because they can't afford fertilizer, the ripple effects won't show up in hunger statistics for months. By then, it's too late.

The countries that can't outbid Europe

Yara's Holsether raised another point that hasn't gotten enough attention: "In a global auction for fertilizer, Europe will have a stronger buying power than poorer parts of the world."

When fertilizer is scarce, rich countries can outbid poor ones. Europe will get what it needs. Africa won't.

The UN warned that rising food and fuel prices from the Iran war will worsen hunger "for vulnerable populations in the region and beyond." That's diplomatic language for: the countries already facing famine will get hit hardest.

Gaza and Sudan are already in confirmed famine. Parts of Gaza were briefly out of famine status in December after aid access improved, but Reuters reported that under a worst-case scenario — renewed hostilities and halted aid — the entire Gaza Strip could be at risk of famine through mid-April 2026.

Afghanistan has 17.4 million people in crisis food insecurity. Only Sudan and Yemen are worse.

These countries can't afford a global fertilizer shortage. They can't afford food prices spiking because European farmers are paying whatever it takes to keep yields up.

The double impact

Holsether called it "a double impact." Fertilizer supplies from the Gulf are being choked off, and the price of natural gas — needed to capture nitrogen from the air to make fertilizer — is rocketing.

Qatar and Iran both reduced fertilizer production as a direct result of the war. Some Asian governments ordered gas rationing.

When gas prices spike, it drives up the cost of producing fertilizer everywhere. Even countries not dependent on Gulf fertilizer feel it.

The Council on Foreign Relations noted something critical: countries had already been relying on the Gulf states to offset fertilizer losses from the Ukraine war and growing Chinese export restrictions.

There's no backup plan. The pipeline Saudi Arabia built to bypass Hormuz is for oil, not ammonia. G7 countries don't have strategic fertilizer reserves like they do for oil. Ship captains would rather risk running oil than fertilizer through a war zone.

What happens next

The WFP 2026 Global Outlook projected 318 million people in crisis hunger before the Iran war escalated. That number assumed some level of stability.

It didn't account for the Strait of Hormuz being effectively closed. It didn't account for fertilizer prices spiking 30% in two weeks. It didn't account for spring planting decisions being made under these conditions.

If the war drags on, and if fertilizer shortages cut crop yields by even 20-30%, the 318 million figure will look optimistic by harvest time.

Two famines are confirmed. The infrastructure to feed people is being outpaced by the infrastructure to starve them.

And the next planting season? It's happening right now.