With geopolitical crises like the Iran war and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine heating up, plus the current El Niño event flexing its muscles, the world is teetering on the edge of another major food price explosion.
As of August 6, 2026, the Russia-Ukraine conflict remains stuck in a tense, escalating standoff, with multiple rounds of negotiations going nowhere.
The Russia-Ukraine war, which erupted over four years ago, set off a global food price crisis through supply disruptions, transport bottlenecks, and shaken market expectations. Before the war, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for nearly a third of global wheat exports, with Ukraine supplying over half of the world’s sunflower oil. Russia, meanwhile, was the largest exporter of nitrogen fertilizer and the second-largest exporter of both potash and phosphate.
After Western nations kicked major Russian banks out of the SWIFT payment system, international shipping and insurance firms refused to handle Russian grain shipments. That meant Russian crops struggled to reach global markets, tightening supply even further. Fertilizer prices are projected to jump 31% in 2026, with urea—the most widely used chemical nitrogen fertilizer in agriculture—spiking a staggering 60%.
Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russian oil and gas infrastructure have further curbed Russian diesel and natural gas exports. Both are critical inputs for food production—natural gas is the backbone of nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing, whilefarm machinery, cross-border grain trucks, and cold-chain storage equipment all run heavily on diesel.
Similarly, the US-Iran war that broke out in February has systematically pushed up global food prices through core channels like energy, fertilizer, and shipping. The blockage in the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted the flow of agricultural commodities and every input the farming system relies on.
The International Energy Agency has warned that the impact has already surpassed the oil crisis of the 1970s. Wild swings in oil prices have directly driven up fuel costs for farm equipment and shipping, while global grain freight rates and insurance premiums have soared in tandem.
On top of that, roughly one-third of the world’s urea moves through the Strait of Hormuz. The war has effectively choked off a vital artery of the global fertilizer trade. Add in export controls imposed by fertilizer-producing nations like India, and global fertilizer prices have climbed as much as 40%, crushing farmers’ planting intentions worldwide and directly hitting rice and soybean output in countries like Thailand and Brazil.
The Iran war has also rattled food export markets in the Middle East and South Asia. India’s agricultural exports to the Middle East have been disrupted, while multiple countries have tightened their own food export policies to safeguard domestic supplies—amplifying the global supply gap even further.
Iran and Oman have agreed on geographic coordinates for a new shipping route in the Strait of Hormuz. Once this new lane goes live, the two original north-south channels that have served the strait for 60 years will be completely shut down. Vessels entering the Persian Gulf will use the Iran-controlled lane, while those exiting will use the Oman-controlled lane. This temporary route is expected to remain operational for 2 to 4 months.
Torero, chief economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, predicts global commodity prices are about to climb even higher. If the Iran war drags on, up to 19 million more people could fall into chronic hunger by 2030, with Asia and Africa bearing the brunt of the impact.
At the same time, a rapidly intensifying super El Niño is compounding global food insecurity from multiple angles.
El Niño is a climate phenomenon marked by unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. It’s the opposite of La Niña, typically occurring every 2 to 7 years, with each event lasting 9 to 12 months on average. It disrupts global atmospheric circulation, triggering abnormal weather across different regions and hitting agriculture, ecosystems, and daily life hard.
According to assessments from the World Food Programme, based in Rome, Italy, this El Niño event could push nearly 49 million more people into acute food insecurity, bringing the global total to a staggering 274 million. Central America and southern Africa are expected to be hit hardest.
El Niño also tends to bring prolonged droughts to Australia and Southeast Asia, while triggering frequent floods in major crop-producing areas like southern South America and the southern United States—directly wreaking havoc on staple crops and cash crops such as corn, rice, and cocoa.
FAO data shows that in April of this year, the global food price index rose 1.6% month-on-month and 2.0% year-on-year, marking the third consecutive monthly gain and hitting a multi-year high not seen in nearly four years.
Industry insiders like Torero estimate that it typically takes 3 to 6 months for commodity price movements to trickle down to retail food prices. That means end-consumer food prices will start climbing noticeably by late 2026, with the increases expanding further into 2027.Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, projects global food prices to rise a cumulative 15.8% by 2028.