War’s Long Lines, Hunger, and Health Crises

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When we think of the US war against Iran, US gas price increases immediately come to mind. As we gather more information about the war, we start to consider inter-nation tensions. We recognize how oil infrastructure is actively weaponized, how fires generate emissions, and how our already fragile planet is being further fractured. We come full circle and think of living in the midst of a war zone — How would we survive in the same situation? Over a million people in Lebanon have been displaced. How would we work, get medications, and assure the safety of our families with imperial forces bombing our neighborhoods? What could we do to offset the war-forced hunger and health crises that are the cruel byproducts of greedy politicians?

The ripple effects of the near total shipping standstill in the Strait of Hormuz are already being felt in the region and around the world. Increasing energy, fuel, and fertilizer costs have intensified hunger in and beyond the Middle East.

And the reason why is much more complex than an inability to access daily meals.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is warning that the total number of people around the world facing acute levels of hunger could reach record numbers in 2026 if the escalation in the Middle East continues to destabilize the world’s economy. New analysis by WFP estimates that almost 45 million more people could fall into acute food insecurity or worse if the conflict does not end by the middle of the year, and if oil prices remain above $100 a barrel. These would add to the 318 million people around the world who are already food insecure.

The US war against Iran has changed everything for people living within its dark reach. Daily life is upended. Homes are damaged or uninhabitable. It’s hard to hold a job with roads filled with craters and daily threats of attack.

These and other factors make it nearly impossible for people to find or afford enough food or water to survive, the WFP continues. A child living in a country ravaged by conflict is more than twice as likely to be malnourished and out of school than their peers in peaceful settings.

“A worrying amount of food, or inputs into modern agriculture, are going through this very small channel,” said Ginni Braich, a data scientist who studies food insecurity at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Better Planet Laboratory, told Mother Jones. The sudden and cascading effects of trade halting through the waterway, according to Braich, “really underscores how interconnected everything is, and how fragile… just any small amount of disruption can have huge aftershocks that reverberate all around the world.”

Food systems were already under growing strain. Now, with the Strait waterway as a primary conduit for shipments of food as well as fossil fuels, food supply chains are in real trouble. Palm oil exports coming from Southeast Asia. Grain shipments headed to Gulf countries. Oilseeds like soybeans. Rice, corn, and sugar are also major imports. Food insecurity due to the US war against Iran will hit the world’s most vulnerable citizens, especially after US President Donald J. Trump decided that the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, wasn’t important enough to fund. USAID-funded programs saved over 90 million lives in the past 20 years.

Meanwhile, Big Ag reaps enormous profits under the guise of sustaining food supply chains, and the genesis is Big Oil.

It Always Comes Back to Big Oil, Doesn’t It?

War’s pervasive hunger crises can be traced in part back to Big Agriculture. History shows that, for big agribusiness, a global crisis is less of a disaster and more of a strategic marketing opportunity. Big Ag pleads for reduced supply chain regulations and environmental protections. Yet fertilizer is the single largest controllable emissions lever in crop production.about 40% of crop farm gate emissions come from fertilizer nitrous oxide alone. When fertilizer manufacturing emissions are added, estimated at about 0.4 to 0.5 billion tons CO2e per year, fertilizer accounts for roughly half of total crop system emissions. No other single input in crop agriculture comes close.

The mineral nutrients that plants need most are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. In ecosystems like forests and grasslands, plants get these nutrients as part of a natural cycle. Breakdown of dead and decomposing plants. Applying manure and compost as fertilizer. But, as the Union of Concerned Scientist explains, the vast majority of agricultural production is fueled by synthetic fertilizers: products of dirty industries and polluting factories. Using synthetic fertilizers within a factory farming model is a choice that Big Ag makes to enhance profitability, but it comes at a price of taxpayers absorbing the costs during war. Farmers already stuck in a cycle of chemical addiction struggle to stay afloat.

Plus, some of the world’s most prominent exporters of nitrogen fertilizers depend on the Strait of Hormuz, and these nitrogen fertilizers are unalterably tied to the way industrial agriculture succeeds.** Nitrogen fertilizers are essential to feeding the world, yet they remain one of the most energy-intensive parts of the food value chain, long reliant on fossil fuels.

Plus there’s no strategic reserve for nitrogen-based fertilizer. What’s on hand is all there is right now. Iran and the surrounding region is also the source for almost half of the world’s sulfur, which is a key ingredient in phosphate fertilizers.

The timing couldn’t be worse, with spring planting in the northern hemisphere around the corner. Who’s going to feel the impact? The consumer.

(**Want the recipe for nitrogen fertilizer? Take natural gas and break it down to extract hydrogen. Combine that with nitrogen to make ammonia. Mix the ammonia with carbon dioxide to make urea. Everything seems to cycle back to fossil fuels, doesn’t it?)

Solutions for War-Induced Hunger and Food Insecurity

In his press conferences discussing the US war against Iran, Trump made no mention of fertilizer—or food. What he doesn’t want to mention is that, in the US, one in seven people currently face food insecurity.

The non-profit Action against Hunger outlines how, despite decades of humanitarian progress, we are reversing progress in fighting hunger. More people are facing severe hunger today than at any point in the past decade. Conflict, climate shocks, and economic collapse are pushing millions to the brink of famine. As hunger deepens, so does instability, making it even harder to deliver aid and build lasting solutions.

Chris Armitage, national security expert and author of The Existentialist Republic, writes, “Detection works. Documentation works. Publication works. What consistently fails is the step between knowing and doing, and in the one case where that step got taken, ordinary people took it themselves.” It’s time to fight back against this focus on self, which stems from our primal imperative for self-preservation. We can start by advocating to change US subsidies for Big Ag.

New appreciation for small holders shifts control of food systems and gives local and regional farmers incentives to develop technologies so native food systems thrive. Soil integrity and ecosystem biodiversity become held in high esteem. Local infrastructure supports local food so that processing centers, aggregators, transportation hubs, and distribution locations become part of robust community building food system efforts. Food systems attain circularity and success.

We must speak out against systemic and avoidable hunger in all its forms if we are, indeed, as we profess, moral beings.

Resources

• “Hunger hotspots in 2026: Devastating hunger amid a life-threatening funding crisis.” Action against Hunger. February 10, 2026.
• “Iran war and food prices: How Big Ag profits from the crisis.” Amanda Larsson. Greenpeace. March 19, 2026.
• “The other Iran war crisis: It’s threatening global food supplies.” Ayurella Horn-Muller. Mother Jones. March 13, 2026.
• “WFP Projects Food Insecurity Could Reach Record Levels as a Result of Middle East Escalation.” World Food Program USA. March 17, 2026.
• “What do countries do when the head of their government is a foreign asset?” Christopher Armitage. March 19, 2026.
• “What’s the problem with fossil fuel–based fertilizer?” Union of Concerned Scientists. December 5, 2023.