Beyond oil: The Gulf crisis is becoming a food security crisis

Ask most people what the Gulf crisis will cost the world and they will say oil. Fair enough. Prices are the part we can watch every morning. But the bill that worries me more will arrive later and quietly: a farmer who buys less fertilizer than he needs, a thinner harvest, a family that can no longer afford a decent meal. Two things are happening at once. The Gulf states import most of what they eat, so every delayed ship is a problem for their own tables. And the same region sells the raw materials that farmers elsewhere rely on to grow food. Block the sea lanes and you hurt the people eating in the Gulf and the people growing […]