FAO warned scarcity of urea and other nitrogen products will lower crop yields through the 2026-2027 growing season.
WHY THIS MATTERS · This matters because most of the world's fertilizer flows through a handful of choke points — Russian and Belarusian potash, Moroccan phosphate, gas-linked nitrogen — so one export curb or gas spike raises fertilizer costs, cuts crop yields, and pushes food prices up fastest in poor import-dependent countries.
Part of the monitored dynamic Fertilizer Supply Security · VUCA INDEX 52/100
"The Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that the resulting scarcity of urea and other nitrogen products will show up as lower yields through the 2026–2027 growing season, hitting import-dependent and already food-insecure countries in Africa and Asia the hardest."
Extracted by pipeline v0.5 (claude-opus-4-8) from aljazeera.com · approved by christopher@vucanews.com JUL 9.
Extracted JUL 8; approved JUL 9 at 0.62.
- World Bank fertiliser price index rose more than 12 percent in Q1 2026, reaching its highest level since October 2022.
- Roughly 30 percent of the world's seaborne fertiliser trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
- Maharashtra Agriculture Department instructed municipal and district officials to maintain adequate supplies of quality seeds and fertilisers to prevent farmer shortages during late-stage sowing.
- India continues to import urea to meet domestic demand despite existing manufacturing capacity.
- India's Union Cabinet approved the National Investment Policy for Urea-2026 to encourage gas-based urea manufacturing and increase domestic production.