Switzerland sources most of its fertilizer from neighboring European countries. (symbol image)Image: dpa
March 28, 2026, 07:42March 28, 2026, 07:42
The Iran war poses a threat to farmers and food prices around the globe: mineral fertilizers have increased in price on world markets by around 30 to 40 percent since the beginning of the year.
That’s what Philipp Spinne, the managing director of the German Raiffeisen Association (DRV), says. This means that a similar situation has arisen as in February 2022: “The world market prices for nitrogen fertilizers are increasingly approaching the maximum level that we had at the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” says Spinne.
In Europe, the effects have not yet been felt directly by consumers. Many farmers had already bought their fertilizer for this spring before the war began, as a spokesman for the Bavarian Farmers’ Association says. Switzerland sources most of its fertilizer from neighboring European countries.
Four years ago, the threat to global food security feared by some experts did not materialize. This was due, among other things, to the fact that Russia – one of the world’s most important fertilizer producers – benefited from the attack on its neighboring country and increased its fertilizer exports. The EU has now decided to gradually increase tariffs for Russian nitrogen fertilizer. This week, Russia temporarily restricted fertilizer exports to protect its own farmers.
Fertilizer price depends on gas prices
But why do wars cause fertilizer prices to rise worldwide? This is due to the high energy requirement for production: “Gas prices determine between 80 and 90 percent of the costs of ammonia and nitrogen production,” says a spokesman for the Agricultural Industry Association. If gas becomes more expensive, fertilizer prices automatically rise. And if farmers fertilize less, harvest losses are the result.
And what is the potential danger to food production? In a paper published in 2008, Dutch environmental scientist Jan Willem Erisman and several colleagues calculated that one hectare of arable land now produces yields twice as high as at the beginning of the 20th century, and 48 percent of the world’s population owes their diet to the global use of mineral fertilizers.
An estimated one third of the urea traded worldwide and around twenty percent of the ammonia pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The direct impact on Europe is small: “Europe has hardly received any fertilizer from the conflict region for years,” says the Agricultural Industry Association. (sda/dpa)