The Iran war could haunt grocery bills long after the fighting stops

• The war in Iran has driven up fertilizer prices and disrupted a key planting season.
• The disruption affects crops like corn, wheat, and rice, which feed both humans and animals.
• Supply chain scholars say the conflict will affect global food prices, even if the war ends soon.

Even if the war in Iran ended tomorrow, the damage to the global food system is already underway.

The conflict has choked off key fertilizer supplies and driven up fuel costs at a critical moment in the agricultural calendar, raising the likelihood of smaller harvests for staple crops like corn, wheat, and rice.

Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz — which handles a significant share of global fertilizer trade — have already sent prices for fertilizer ingredients such as ammonia, phosphorus, and potassium sharply higher, while pushing up oil and diesel costs across the supply chain, making it more expensive to grow, transport, and store food.

In a best-case scenario where fighting subsides quickly, experts told Business Insider that consumers worldwide will likely feel the impact through persistently higher grocery bills — with more severe risks if shortages deepen or countries begin restricting exports.

The timing is especially fraught.

"This is a seeding season," Nick Vyas, founding director of USC Marshall's Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute, told Business Insider. Fertilizer shortages now are likely to have a downstream impact on overall production, he said, adding that food prices will be affected as a result.

Prices for key inputs like urea — an ingredient in high-nitrogen fertilizers used to grow crops — have surged from around $350 per ton to over $600 for the first time since 2022. Francisco Martin-Rayo, CEO of agricultural prediction platform Helios AI, said that, since fertilizers are already a major cost for farmers, the jump is reshaping planting decisions.

At the same time, supply has been disrupted. Roughly half of the world's urea fertilizer is produced in the Gulf and typically moves through the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint now snarled by the conflict. Damage to production and shipping risks have compounded the squeeze, Martin-Rayo said.

And farmers don't have the luxury of waiting it out.

"The fertilizer that you're not putting into your crops in March and April, you can't make up for in June and July if a ceasefire comes through," he said.

That creates what Martin-Rayo described as a "domino effect" — higher input costs, followed by lower fertilizer use and weaker yields, and eventually shrinking global grain stockpiles.

Vyas said the Iran conflict is colliding with existing global pressures, including the war in Ukraine, which previously accounted for roughly 30% of global wheat exports and more than 60% of sunflower oil exports.

Now, with Gulf fertilizer flows constrained, Vyas said countries have fewer alternatives than they did in 2022 — turning what was already a fragile system into a more acute supply shock.

"It's just a compounded impact," Vyas said.

Rising costs on corn, wheat, and beyond

Staples like wheat, corn, rice, and sunflower oil are particularly exposed — and the effects won't stay contained. Those crops are core to both human diets and animal feed, meaning disruptions will ripple into meat and dairy, Vyas said.

Higher energy prices are amplifying the problem. Modern food systems rely on energy at every step, from fertilizer production to refrigerated transport.

"When you choke 20% of supply, you have definitely downstream impact," Vyas said, noting that consumers ultimately absorb those costs.

In the US, that likely means higher grocery bills rather than empty shelves — but the increases could still be meaningful. Martin-Rayo said a best-case scenario could push food prices up by 12% to 18%, adding roughly $100 or more a month to a typical household's budget.

And even if the conflict eases, relief won't be immediate. Supply chain shocks "don't disappear the next day," Vyas said.

"It takes somewhere between four to six months, in some cases almost a year, before things start to stabilize," Vyas said. Longer if the conflict continues to drag on.

That lag is what analysts worry about most. By the time the full impact shows up in grocery aisles, the disruption to this year's harvests — and possibly beyond — may already be locked in.

Vyas warned the risks could extend beyond higher prices if the crisis deepens. If countries begin hoarding supplies or restricting exports, "it could further deteriorate their ability to sustain day-to-day caloric needs of their people," he said, particularly in more vulnerable regions, like the Middle East and North Africa.

"When the hunger kicks in, a lot of bad things tend to happen in society," Vyas added.

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