Analysis of: Energy shock talk grabs headlines but the Iran war is also driving the world towards a food crisis
The Guardian | March 22, 2026
TL;DR
Trump's war on Iran is blocking shipping routes and spiking fertilizer costs, pushing 45 million more people toward acute hunger—mostly in the Global South. Small farmers in Africa bear the costs while the war's architects face no consequences.
Analytical Focus:Material Conditions Contradictions Interconnections
This article reveals how a military conflict ostensibly about energy security and geopolitical dominance translates directly into material devastation for the world's poorest populations. The war's disruption of the Strait of Hormuz exposes the fragile architecture of globalized capitalism: a single chokepoint controls not just oil flows but fertilizer supply chains, food exports, and the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers from Tanzania to Kenya. The material conditions analysis is stark—Tanzanian avocado farmers forced to accept 50% price cuts, Kenyan tea warehouses overflowing, and the prospect of 45 million additional people facing acute hunger. The central contradiction here is between capitalism's drive toward integrated global supply chains for maximum efficiency and profit extraction, and the system's simultaneous tendency toward imperialist conflict that destroys the very infrastructure those chains depend upon. This is not accidental but structural: the same logic that makes the Strait of Hormuz a critical node for fertilizer and food exports also makes it a strategic military target. The contradiction between social production (food grown by millions of small farmers worldwide) and private appropriation (controlled by shipping companies, commodity traders, and imperial powers) becomes violently apparent when war disrupts the circuits of capital. The article demonstrates how the costs of imperialist war are externalized onto those with the least power to resist. While the framing occasionally naturalizes this arrangement—treating supply chain fragility as unfortunate rather than designed—it does center the voices of affected workers and advocacy groups. The UN World Food Programme's projection of 45 million additional hunger victims is not a natural disaster but a direct consequence of policy decisions made in Washington, with devastating consequences cascading through core-periphery relations.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Small-scale farmers (Tanzania, Kenya, Global South), Agricultural workers and harvesters, Shipping companies and logistics capital, Gulf fertilizer producers, Agrifood corporations, Imperial state actors (U.S. administration), Debt-burdened developing nation governments, Subsistence consumers in the Global South
Beneficiaries: Military-industrial complex, Energy speculators benefiting from price volatility, Core nations with food sovereignty, Creditors holding Global South debt
Harmed Parties: Small-scale farmers forced to accept exploitative prices, Agricultural workers facing unemployment, Consumers in food-import-dependent nations, Debt-burdened governments unable to subsidize food costs, Civilians in war zones (Iran, Middle East), The 45 million facing acute hunger
The power asymmetry is staggering: decisions made by the U.S. administration directly determine whether Tanzanian farmers can sell their avocados or Somali families can afford food. Small producers have no influence over war policy, shipping routes, or fertilizer prices, yet bear the material consequences. The article names Transform Trade's documentation of these impacts, highlighting how advocacy organizations attempt to make visible what powerful actors prefer to obscure. Meanwhile, developing nation governments are trapped between rising food costs and debt obligations—unable to protect their populations without capital they don't control.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Blocked shipping routes through Strait of Hormuz, Collapse of air freight capacity, Fertilizer supply chain disruption (urea, sulphur), Rising fossil fuel prices above $100/barrel, Increased shipping insurance premiums and freight rates, Global interest rate increases responding to inflation, Existing debt burdens in developing economies
The article exposes the brutal reality of agricultural production relations in the global capitalist system. Small-scale farmers perform the actual labor of growing food—'responsible for most of the world's jobs and almost all of its food'—yet exercise no control over the conditions of sale. They are price-takers in a system where commodity traders, shipping conglomerates, and imperial powers set the terms. The fertilizer supply chain reveals how agricultural production in the periphery depends on inputs controlled by capital in the Gulf and core nations. When these circuits are disrupted, surplus extraction simply shifts form: farmers who cannot sell their crops lose income, while those who can must accept 50% price cuts—the difference captured somewhere along the chain.
Resources at Stake: Agricultural commodities (avocados, tea, staple foods), Natural gas and oil, Fertilizer inputs (urea, sulphur, nitrogen), Maritime shipping routes, Foreign exchange reserves in developing nations, Food security for 363 million people globally
Historical Context
Precedents: Ukraine war energy shock (2022), COVID-19 global supply chain disruptions, 1973 oil crisis and its food price impacts, Structural adjustment programs creating food import dependence, Historical pattern of imperial wars externalizing costs to periphery
This crisis exemplifies the late neoliberal period's characteristic vulnerabilities: decades of 'just-in-time' supply chains optimized for profit extraction over resilience, systematic destruction of food sovereignty in the Global South through structural adjustment and trade liberalization, and the financialization of commodities that amplifies price shocks. The article notes this hits 'at a time when many developing economies struggle to service their debt'—a direct legacy of IMF/World Bank conditionalities that forced these nations into export-oriented agriculture and import dependency. The pattern is consistent: the costs of imperial adventurism are socialized globally while benefits accrue to capital in the core.
Contradictions
Primary: The fundamental contradiction is between capitalism's need for stable, integrated global supply chains to maximize accumulation, and imperialism's tendency toward destructive competition that ruptures those same chains. The system simultaneously requires the Strait of Hormuz to function as a frictionless conduit for global trade AND treats it as a legitimate theater of great-power conflict.
Secondary: Social production by millions of small farmers vs. private control of distribution and pricing, Global food system's technical capacity to feed everyone vs. market mechanisms that produce hunger amid abundance, Developing nations' food export orientation vs. their populations' food security needs, Short-term military objectives vs. long-term economic stability
These contradictions will likely intensify before any resolution. Rising food prices will generate social unrest in affected countries, potentially destabilizing governments and creating new crises. Some nations may pursue food sovereignty policies that challenge neoliberal trade arrangements. The article suggests even a quick end to hostilities would leave 'months' of disruption—but the deeper contradiction between integrated production and imperial competition will persist, generating future crises. The potential for transformation lies in whether affected populations and their organizations can translate their material deprivation into political demands that challenge the system's structure rather than merely its symptoms.
Global Interconnections
This article demonstrates how a conflict in the Persian Gulf instantaneously becomes a food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia through the material infrastructure of global capitalism. The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a geographic feature but a node in the world-system where the flows of oil, fertilizer, and food converge—and where imperial power can be projected to devastating effect. The dependency relations are products of historical development: decades of structural adjustment forced African and Asian nations into export agriculture while dismantling food self-sufficiency, creating the conditions where a distant war immediately threatens livelihoods. The unequal exchange built into the global trading system means that peripheral nations export primary commodities at prices set in metropolitan markets, import manufactured goods and fertilizers they once produced domestically, and carry debt denominated in currencies they cannot issue. When crisis hits, they lack the policy space that core nations enjoy. The U.S. can wage war and run deficits; Tanzania's farmers must accept 50% price cuts or watch their crops rot. This is not a bug in the system but its operating logic—the externalization of imperial costs onto those least able to resist.
Conclusion
This analysis reveals that hunger is not a technical problem of insufficient production but a political question of how the global system distributes costs and benefits. The 45 million people who may face acute hunger are not victims of scarcity but of a system that prioritizes imperial competition and capital accumulation over human life. For workers and farmers in the Global South, the lesson is clear: their material conditions are determined by decisions made in distant capitals over which they have no democratic control. Building food sovereignty, challenging debt mechanisms, and forging international solidarity among affected producers represents the path toward a world where wars launched by the powerful do not immediately translate into hunger for the powerless. The contradictions exposed here will not resolve themselves—they must be organized against.
Suggested Reading
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how monopoly capitalism drives imperialist conflict illuminates why U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf follows the logic of protecting capital flows rather than any humanitarian concern.
- The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality by Jason Hickel (2017) Hickel's contemporary account of how global inequality is maintained through trade rules, debt mechanisms, and structural adjustment directly explains why African farmers bear the costs of wars they did not choose.
- The Accumulation of Capital by Rosa Luxemburg (1913) Luxemburg's theory of capitalism's need to constantly incorporate non-capitalist territories helps explain the dependency relations that make Global South food systems so vulnerable to disruption.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's documentation of how crises are exploited to advance capitalist restructuring offers a framework for understanding how this war's aftermath may deepen rather than challenge existing inequalities.