Four scenarios for a looming global food crisis

In this special edition of Fast Thinking, our experts are doing something different: Rather than reacting to breaking news, they’re anticipating it by forecasting where consequential events are headed and what possible futures await. Call it Fast Foresight. 

Two problems are currently colliding, with major implications for the world’s food supply. In the Gulf, very few ships carrying oil and gas are passing through the Strait of Hormuz due to the risk of attacks, driving up global fertilizer prices (nitrogen-based fertilizers such as urea are processed from natural gas).

But even if strait traffic ramps up quickly, another challenge has emerged: a “super” El Niño set to begin this month. Caused by Pacific Ocean temperatures that are more than 2 degrees Celsius warmer than normal, it will raise global temperatures and disrupt weather patterns around the world. Analysts debate how severe and widespread the consequences will be for food production, with some saying that an already hotter climate plus a “super” El Niño could degrade food production across the entire planet.

In this debut edition of Fast Foresight, we explore four scenarios for how these developments could unfold into 2027, using the foresight tool of a 2×2 matrix. The y-axis refers to the severity of the coming El Niño in terms of whether its impacts will be mixed or global. The x-axis refers to the speed with which normal passage of oil and gas exports resumes in the Strait of Hormuz. Read on to discover what might happen next—and how the worst incomes could be avoided.

• Peter Engelke: Senior fellow for foresight at the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security  
• Ginger Matchett: Assistant director at the GeoStrategy Initiative 

Scenario #1: The narrowest escape

• Iran, Oman, and the United States agree in September 2026 to a binding deal that facilitates a return of regular ship traffic nearing levels before the war with Iran, with limited transit fees charged by Tehran. The reopening allows oil and gas prices to fall to levels near what they were before the conflict, even though it takes months for that to occur.  
• Through the fall of 2026 and into 2027, the super El Niño causes droughts, wildfires, and flooding around the world, but with uneven effects. Food production in regions such as South Asia and southern Africa is depressed, while other regions including the midwestern United States are stable or even experience production gains through wetter growing seasons.  
• This set of developments keeps food prices from exploding, even though farmers continue to pay more for nitrogen-based fertilizers owing to war-related damage to Qatar’s liquefied natural gas plants.  
• Although food prices are elevated through 2026 and into 2027, the downside impacts are contained by creative and cooperative policies and practices. In some regions, governments and farmers increase local production of fertilizers to relieve upward pressure on input prices (for example, through biofertilizers). Other regions collaborate to alleviate pressure on fertilizer and food stockpiles. Countries around the world agree not to limit the export of domestically produced crops such as rice and wheat. And many governments utilize targeted measures to support distressed farmers and consumers rather than resorting to broad, costly, and often ineffective subsidies.  
• This combination of measures forestalls the worst outcomes, narrowly preventing this food crisis from devolving into violence, revolution, and systemic breakdown.  

Scenario #2: Uneven political upheaval 

• Oil and gas traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains low through the fall of 2026 and into 2027. Although Arab Gulf states, with US backing, continue to build overland pipeline alternatives to the strait, replacing the strait’s full capacity to transship oil and gas remains many years away. Fertilizer prices stay elevated and even creep upwards by the end of the year. The El Niño negatively impacts some regions, farmers, and crops, but the world is spared a systemic impact. 
• The world’s governments face a greater challenge than in the first scenario. Sustained high fertilizer prices depress global agricultural output into the 2027 planting seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres. Increased food prices in the regions that are spared the worst impacts of the super El Niño prove difficult enough to manage. But for those regions facing the brunt of the El Niño—severe drought, heat, and flooding—the situation becomes almost untenable.  
• In those places, prices of core food commodities spike, triggering social unrest, mass protests, and political upheaval, especially in drought-stricken countries in South and Southeast Asia, Central America and parts of South America, and central and southern Africa.

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Scenario #3: Disasters and discontent

• In this scenario, the conditions in the previous scenario are flipped: a swift resumption of higher traffic through the strait combines with severe El Niño impacts globally. With the reopening of the strait, the prices of nitrogen-based fertilizers stabilize and even begin to fall as 2026 ends and 2027 begins. The expectations of fertilizer importers, including farmers (who must make decisions about how much fertilizer to acquire and from where), rebound because the strait’s reopening raises confidence that supplies will be available during the coming planting seasons.  
• However, El Niño’s negative impacts manifest around the world rather than in only a few drought-stricken regions. Instead of delivering gentler and more frequent rainfall to wetter regions, the super El Niño delivers torrential downpours and extreme flooding, which destroys crops, livestock, and farms; erodes soils; and overwhelms infrastructure. And all regions suffer from El Niño’s higher temperatures at a time when the climate is already growing hotter, causing plant and livestock stress, drier soils, pest infestations, and other problems.  
• The impact of this ecological havoc is more widespread than in the second scenario. Prices for basic foodstuffs rise everywhere, with no breadbasket regions capable of offsetting shortfalls elsewhere. Social discontent and political turbulence follow in many countries, including in middle- and high-income countries, with the worst of it occurring in lower-income countries that have the least capacity to mitigate impacts of drought and flooding through food subsidies, advanced technologies, or other means. Only the quick reopening of the strait prevents the worst possible rise in food prices globally.

Scenario #4: Political collapse 

• In this scenario, the worst outcomes for both the strait and super El Niño materialize. Farming conditions for most crops in most places become more difficult, while everyone deals with sustained higher fertilizer prices.  
• The result is a situation that becomes untenable for a great number of countries around the world. Prices of both staple foods such as corn or rice and non-staple commodities such as cocoa or coffee spike across the board and stay high into 2027. Although there are historical precedents for such a predicament—such as the wheat-price spike following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine that was alleviated by international cooperation—few if any food crises have been this comprehensive.  
• In this scenario, the challenge facing the world’s governments is far greater than in 2022, because the compounding impacts of multiple breadbasket failures and soaring input prices make cooperation far harder to achieve. The cooperative efforts described in scenario 1—for example countries agreeing not to place export restrictions on domestically produced crops—don’t occur. More people become hungrier (the World Food Programme is already forecasting that an additional 49 million people will be made food insecure by the impending El Niño alone). Food riots and social disorder follow in numerous countries and regions.  
• Previously stable countries are pushed into fragility and some into outright political collapse. Migration outflows from failed states trigger political crises in other countries—think of the results of Syria’s 2011 collapse, but several times over—with unpredictable consequences that reverberate for years to come.  

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Image: A farmer sprinkles fertilizer on an agricultural field on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir. The ongoing Iran-Israel conflict has disrupted global fertilizer supplies, particularly through the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route that handles roughly one-third of the world's traded fertilizers.(Faisal Bashir / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect)