One-third of the world's fertiliser exports moved through the Strait of Hormuz. It's been closed since February 28.

Nobody is writing about this. They should be.

While Nigeria tracks the Iran war through oil prices and airline fares, a slower crisis is building inside the food supply chain. One-third of the world's nitrogen fertiliser exports move through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait has been largely closed since February 28, when the US-Israel-Iran conflict began. The benchmark price of urea, the most widely traded fertiliser, is up roughly 30 percent in a month. In some constrained markets, spot prices are higher still.

Farmers order fertiliser in March for April and May application. That is the planting window for the crops that feed Nigeria in the second half of 2026. That window is now.

Nigeria is already among six countries listed by the WFP at the worst food emergency level globally. Nearly 35 million Nigerians face food insecurity. The WFP ran out of funding for emergency nutrition support in northern Nigeria by March 2026. The baseline before this fertiliser shock is already an emergency.

The mechanism runs like this. Urea has climbed from roughly $300–$350 per tonne in early 2024 to $452–$454 per tonne in early 2026, with constrained markets seeing $590–$700. Qatar is the world's largest urea exporter. Qatar ships through Hormuz. Nigeria imports fertiliser, and Nigerian smallholder farmers in the North-Central and North-West regions are ordering inputs for a planting season in which the primary global supplier's shipping route is blocked. They're already operating on thin margins. They're already absorbing the cost of insecurity. They're already paying fuel prices that have tripled transportation costs.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes explicitly that in the 2022 Russia-Ukraine fertiliser disruption, the countries whose fertiliser use fell most included Nigeria. The same mechanism is running again. Same vulnerability. Different triggering event.

The FAO warned in October 2025 that 34.7 million Nigerians could face severe food insecurity during the June–August 2026 lean season if interventions don't arrive. That projection was made before the Iran war. Before the Hormuz disruption. Before the latest fertiliser price spike.

The harvest that feeds Nigeria in October depends on what farmers plant in April. What they plant in April depends on whether they can afford fertiliser now. The window is closing.

This is not a future risk. The planting season has already started. The farmer ordering fertiliser in Nasarawa this week, who can't afford what's on the shelf, will pay the cost of a war he has nothing to do with. So will the family buying garri in October when the harvest is short.