…For the northern hemisphere, fertiliser for next year’s growing season will be needed towards the end of this year.

We can expect food prices to rocket.

And in the UK, we have only a single fertiliser manufacturing plant left

https://overcast.fm/+8dw8WNRF4

…If it’s not already obvious, we need to be instituting a Dig For Victory style programme, except it won’t be about ‘victory’, it will be Grow Food To Live Better.

We need national communal regenerative farming started now. Which among other things, means compulsory land orders on wasteful tracts of privately-owned land.

But I guess we’ll wait until hunger ravages because we have one of the stupidest governments of my lifetime in power

…I’m a climate and biosphere collapse-concerned web designer. So aside from shit posting like an old fart, I tend to post about environment and tech.

Being a tech heavy community, Mastodon tends to prick its ears up a bit more when I post about tech. Posts about food systems like the above, not so much.

So by way of a lead in to where this thread is going shortly (and may subsequently continue), here following is a *tech* angle on the Straits of Hormuz being more or less closed…

…The following is taken from a transcript of something I’ll share a link to in a bit.

“The majority of crude oil that passes through the Straits of Hormuz is classified as sour crude with a high sulfur content, and when you refine sour crude, you produce elemental sulfur as a byproduct.

When we pull ~17 million barrels a day of sour crude off the market, we’re not just losing fuel, we also are potentially losing sulfur…

…“And sulfur’s the feedstock for sulfuric acid and sulfuric acid is what we use to leach copper and cobalt out of the ground in places like the DRC and Zambia. The two of those countries together supply over a sixth of global copper and more than 70% of global cobalt.

So the little oil snafu in the Straits of Hormuz could lead to no marginal copper or cobalt.

No transformers, no grid expansion. No grid expansion, no data centers, which means no EV charging infrastructure, no AI build out, etc…

…“So this chain – Hormuz to sulfur, to acid, to copper, to transformers, to compute – really has very little to do with gasoline prices.

But it’s one example of the complexity and risk of our interconnected just in time system.”

- - -

That’s the tech lens. Next up, linking back to food at the top…

…“So here’s another hotter effect: Natural gas.

Qatar sits inside the Persian Gulf. They’re responsible for roughly 20% of all globally traded LNG.

Europe spent two years after Ukraine’s invasion rewiring its entire energy import infrastructure away from Russia’s pipeline gas towards US and Qatari LNG.

So European dependency now runs directly through the closed Straits of Hormuz. And unlike oil, there is no overland alternative for LNG…

…“And the [LNG] price spikes are already hitting European importers and futures markets.

There’s also nitrogen fertilizer. Over 40% of internationally traded nitrogen fertilizers originate from or are navigated through the Persian Gulf.

Nitrogen fertilizer starts with natural gas, which is then the feedstock for ammonia, which becomes urea, which goes on the fields around the world, and a disrupted planting cycle could translate into food price inflation very quickly, within months…

@urlyman Any current shortages are just profiteering.

But if the current stupidity goes on for some months, then yes, there will be a simultaneous uptick in energy prices and fertiliser prices. Anywhere dictatorial that relies on rural voters to outweigh urban voters (hello, Turkey, Pakistan) will be in trouble.

Don’t forget the recursive effect of oil price increases on shipping which affects costs of everything being shipped. Hello, inflation.