President Donald Trump’s decision to blockade Iranian ports is spiking oil and gasoline prices — but it also threatens to intensify shortages of key commodities such as helium and fertilizer.
Iran’s choke hold on ship passage through the Strait of Hormuz was already crimping global supplies — about a third of global fertilizer and helium supplies transit through the strait annually — but the continuing stalemate between the U.S. and Iran comes at arguably the worst time for agriculture, threatening to drive up food prices possibly for months to come even in the best-case scenario.
With gas prices hovering at $4.13 per gallon, according to AAA, adding in persistently high grocery costs is a one-two punch for Republicans ahead of a midterm election that was already expected to be tough.
Even if the strait reopens in the near future, fertilizer inputs such as urea, ammonia, phosphates and sulfur would take about a month to reach the United States, according to Veronica Nigh, senior economist at The Fertilizer Institute, the industry’s trade association. Other economists and agriculture industry insiders say the supply chain backlog could take years to fully recover.
