Keys facts: According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, about a third of the global seaborne trade in fertilisers pass through the Strait of Hormuz(1). Essential components of fertiliser like urea and ammonia are made with energy-intensive production processes including gas. This means that, for efficiency, production tends to be clustered near low-cost gas producers, particularly around the Persian Gulf in countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain the UAE and Iran. This density meant that a single Iranian strike on a Qatari facility has been reported as disrupting 1/7th of global urea production. Volatility in supply is likely to continue(2).
Fertiliser costs are surging for the second time in just 5 years after similar trade disruptions following the invasion of Ukraine caused fertiliser prices to spike to $815 per tonne in April 2022. This is more than four times the price of just over $200 per tonne in 2020(3). Arguably the situation is worse this time round as there is less spare production capacity elsewhere to fill the gap.
UK farmers – as well as those elsewhere – are rightly highlighting the risks of higher farm input costs, especially of red diesel and fertiliser, because of the Iran conflict. They are also simultaneously facing increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather events due to accelerating climate change. The deluges that put productive fields underwater in 2023/24 led to millions of pounds of government intervention to protect farmers with flooded fields.
Home gardening (in aggregate) is way worse than farming in terms of fertilizer use, fossil fuels burned, and any other efficiency, economic, and environmental measures you may want to improve on.
Sure, there are a tiny percentage of home gardeners who are masters of no-till growing, cover cropping, and all that. The other 99.9% are driving their pickup trucks to Home Depot to buy plastic bags of topsoil and jugs of synthetic fertilizer. The issue with widespread deployment of community gardening (at a level that significantly replaces farmed food) is that regular people don’t have either the time or the knowledge to do it.
I think everyone vastly underestimates how much knowledge farmers actually have and think they just clumsily dump vast amounts of fertilizer on their fields like maniacs. In reality, farmers are experts at using the least amount of fertilizer possible for their fields because if they don’t they LOSE MONEY on the crop.
The original linked article is the kind of stuff that can make a difference: changing commercial large scale practices to be more efficient. Trying to add some amateur part time production isn’t going to make any appreciable difference.
Really the best thing home gardeners can do is grow their own fresh herbs. Fresh herbs in the store are not economical and are often nearly spoiled by the time you bring them home anyway.
This is mostly a thing for people who get really into home cooking though. Most people just use dried herbs.