Fertilizer Prices Surge From Iran War, Squeezing U.S. Farms Already Battered by Tariffs and Weather

Here's a story that connects a war in the Middle East directly to what you might pay for corn, bread, and groceries later this year — and it's not the oil angle everyone's been talking about.

When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February, the big economic worry was oil. But there was a second problem quietly unfolding in the background: fertilizer. Specifically, the kind that grows the food on your plate.

The Strait of Hormuz — a narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula — is basically a highway for global shipping. And it turns out it's also a critical chokepoint for fertilizer. According to UN Trade and Development, about one-third of the world's fertilizer transported by sea passes through that strait. When Iran closed it, fertilizer shipments from the Persian Gulf slumped and prices shot up around 25%. The war also triggered a global shortage of natural gas, which is a key ingredient in making nitrogen fertilizer — the kind that's especially important for growing corn and wheat.

So why should you care? Because this hits U.S. farmers at the worst possible time. They were already dealing with tariffs jacking up their equipment costs, extreme weather damaging crops, and high prices for fuel and labor. Now add a fertilizer crunch on top of all that. Corn and wheat growers are particularly exposed — they can spend roughly a third of their entire operating budget on fertilizer alone. A survey by the National Corn Growers Association found that half of respondents said they wouldn't apply the full amount of fertilizer to their crops this year because of higher costs and limited supply. A separate survey found 70% of respondents said they couldn't afford all the fertilizer they needed this season.

Here's the twist, though: most of this pain is being absorbed by farmers, not consumers — at least for now. Experts point out that only about 12 cents of every dollar Americans spend on food actually goes back to the farm; the rest goes to processors, shippers, wholesalers, and grocery stores. So higher fertilizer costs don't translate cleanly into higher prices at the checkout aisle. That said, you can expect food prices to tick up between September and January once harvests roll in — but analysts say most of that inflation won't be directly caused by fertilizer. It's the whole pile of pressures stacking up that's the real problem.

Where it really bites is the longer game. Corn growers surveyed were twice as worried about the 2027 crop as they are about this year's. Farmers who had already locked in their fertilizer supplies before the war started dodged the worst of it — but next year's planting season is a different story. Some are already pivoting to soybeans, which need less nitrogen fertilizer, which is why soybean acreage is expected to jump while corn acreage falls.

There is a bit of relief on the horizon: fertilizer prices have started to come down with the Strait of Hormuz reopening and the prospect of a U.S.-Iran peace deal. The Trump administration also temporarily suspended certain import duties on phosphate fertilizers to help ease the pressure. But experts say it could still take weeks or months for fertilizer manufacturing to fully recover. The bottom line: farmers are getting squeezed from every direction, the worst of the consumer price impact probably hits your grocery bill later this year, and the real stress test for U.S. food production might still be 2027.