World Central Kitchen founder believes the war could cause a ‘silent’ collapse of the global fertilizer trade
The celebrity chef and humanitarianJosé Andréshas a warning for the suits in Washington and around the world: stop looking at the oil tickers and start looking at the soil.
The World Central Kitchen (WCK) founder believes that the world is sleepwalking into a massive, multi-year famine, being slow-walked by the “silent” collapse of the global fertilizer trade as a byproduct of the war withIran.
“I foresee a very big increase in famine across the world by the fall of 2026 and 2027,” Andrés told the Guardian on the sidelines of Semafor’s global economy conference in Washington.
In the wake of disruptions around the strait of Hormuz, a global shipping chokepoint central to ceasefire negotiations between the US and Iran, Andrés pointed to nitrogen fertilizer supply chains, which he says have tightened and are pushing up costs for farmers and raising concerns about global food production
“It is not only oil that leaves through the strait of Hormuz,” he said. “It is also heavy, heavy fertilizers.”
The danger, he explained, was the delay. When fertilizers don’t arrive in time for key planting windows, yields can fall in the following harvest cycle. Disruptions in global trade can ripple into higher prices and lower output, hitting the poorest countries hardest.
“In America, you can have a 2% or 3% increase and people will manage,” he said. “But in places like Haiti, they don’t serve you a kilo of rice, they serve you one ounce at a time. Those people are going to be suffering the consequences.”
There is one solution he has been pushing that he believes is insultingly simple: a 3% “peace tax” based on the total GDP of every country.
“The amount of money we are now increasing in the defense of every single country – if we would only put 3% on the side, there would be plenty of food to make sure we wouldn’t have hunger on planet Earth,” Andrés argued.
Source: Drudge Report
