Numbers Game | Food insecurity and global conflict – The Oxford Student

45 million – number of people the UN World Food Programme says are at risk of acute hunger, provided that US-Iranian hostilities persist. 

Direct conflict has paused, but US and Iranian naval blockades still remain in force. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway encircled by the Gulf states and Iran, continues to be disrupted.

Hormuz transports over a fifth of the world's maritime oil trade. Food-insecure nations in Sub-Saharan Africa are reliant on fertilisers to maintain sufficient crop growth throughout the year, owing to non-ideal climates and little (often overworked) farmland. Much of this fertiliser, refined from crude oil, flows through Hormuz. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, around a third of seaborne trade in fertilisers passes through Hormuz. Acute shortages are now appearing in fertiliser-dependent regions. Trans Nzoia, Kenya's “breadbasketâ€, predicts a 30 percent decline in yields this season alone. Many food-insecure regions are reliant on imports to ensure subsistence levels of nutrition. Sudan — already in the midst of a three-year conflict that has claimed the lives of over 150,000 people — imports 80% of its wheat in any given year. 

Pre-existing fertiliser shortages also incapacitate countries that export their surplus crop to other regions — Brazil, Argentina and India are at risk of having to ration their exportable crop. What this means is that crop prices are surging globally similar to the record inflation observed in the West in the wake of the 2022 Ukraine conflict.

The average family in food-insecure regions will see at least one child die before their fifth birthday. Life expectancies in Sub-Saharan Africa are roughly 25 years below European levels and deaths from hunger are greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. 

The coming few weeks are going to be vital in understanding how this tragedy will further develop. Rumours of an easing of blockades are circulating and language from the US suggests a possibility of thawing tensions.

At the same time, the report gave glum estimations for the threshold in which its hunger predictions ring true — with UN models estimating a blockade lasting until the middle of the year. These conflicts may feel distant, but their effects are measured in hunger levels not seen for more than a century.

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