Fertilizer - Friend or Foe?

From natural gas to chicken nuggets — how a shipping lane exposes the fossil fuels hiding in your food.

Apr 04, 2026

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The Strait of Hormuz is usually described as an oil chokepoint. But right now, it’s also a food chokepoint, because one of the pillars of modern conventional farming moves through the same narrow strip of water: nitrogen fertilizer.

When a narrow strip of water becomes risky, ships don’t just slow down. Insurance rates jump. Freight costs spike. Deliveries slip. Fertilizer that’s supposed to arrive right on time for spring farming starts arriving late, or priced like a luxury good.

Anchoring the conventional American diet, nitrogen fertilizer helps plants turn sunlight into biomass faster, especially in corn, soy, and wheat. Because the conventional farming system has starved the soil of its ability to create nutrients, it needs that synthetic boost to yield the expected crops.

The U.S. does produce nitrogen fertilizer domestically, but it relies on imports to meet demand, especially in the tight spring window. Even when tons are made in North America, the price is set in a global market. That’s why the Strait matters. A significant share of globally traded fertilizer moves through Hormuz, and disruption there tightens supply and resets prices worldwide.

Fertilizer isn’t a side ingredient in the industrial food supply; it is the yield engine. The yields it produces mostly don’t show up as “corn” and “soy” in your shopping cart. They show up as something else entirely.

The Invisible Ingredient in Your Dinner

Most of us picture farming as soil, rain, sun, seeds, and tractors. But a large share of modern crop production is built on synthetic nitrogen, especially urea, a solid nitrogen fertilizer. A white granule you can pour from a bag. A fossil fuel in solid form.

A major food-systems analysis put it bluntly: 99% of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides are derived from fossil fuels.[1] Modern industrial agriculture doesn’t just burn fossil fuels. It uses them as chemistry to bypass Mother Nature, to manufacture fertility, pest control, and speed.

NPR reported farmers watching prices jump as the Hormuz disruption hit right as planting begins.[2] It’s spring, planting season, the moment a conventional corn farmer is counting on fertilizer to be there.

Which Farmers Feel It First?

Not everyone is hit equally. The fastest squeeze shows up in large-scale commodity systems built on predictable access to synthetic inputs.

In other words: the more acreage a crop commands, the more nitrogen it tends to demand. Thus, the more exposed that system is when fertilizer supply tightens.

In the U.S., the biggest acreage crops are also the ones that form the base layer of the modern diet:

Corn: 95 million acres planted in 2025.[3]
Soybeans: 83 million acres planted in 2025.[3]
Wheat: 45 million acres planted in 2025.[4]

It raises a question worth pondering. What do hundreds of millions of acres become?

From Fertilizer Bag to Ultra-Processed Food

The USDA estimates that roughly 40% of the U.S. corn crop goes to ethanol, 37% goes to livestock feed, 11% is processed into food ingredients (corn flour, corn syrup, corn starch, and cooking oil), and the remaining 12% is exported.[5] Less than 1% of American corn is the sweet corn you eat off the cob.[6]

Soybeans follow a similar path. Soybean oil is the most consumed cooking oil in the country and one of the most common ingredients in processed food. Soy lecithin, soy protein isolate, hydrolysed soy protein—these show up in everything from infant formula to energy bars to salad dressing.

Consider nearly 75% of the U.S. food supply is classified as ultra-processed.[7] More than half of the calories the average American adult consumes come from ultra-processed foods. For children, it’s over 60%.[8]

Let’s dissect a chicken nugget: Anatomy of a Chicken Nugget.

The chicken nugget is not food. It is a fossil fuel, disassembled and rebuilt.

Because here is the direct line: Nitrogen fertilizer, made from natural gas, is applied to fields growing commodity corn, soy, and wheat. Those crops are harvested, fractionated in factories, chemically modified, and reassembled into the thousands of shelf-stable products in every supermarket in America.

The government props up this system. Commodity crops (corn, soybeans, cotton) account for roughly 90% of agricultural subsidies.[9] The result is exactly what you’d expect: ultra-processed food is cheap, and whole foods are expensive.

The fertilizer disrupted in the Strait of Hormuz feeds directly into the grocery carts of Americans.

Higher costs for basic staples made up of UPFs (cereal, ketchup)
Increased meat and dairy prices (because feed costs rise)
A tighter squeeze on families already locked into the cheapest calories, on top of already higher gas prices

Organic and Regenerative: Exit Ramps From Fossil-Fuel Fertility

Organic farming forbids the use of fossil-fuel-derived synthetic nitrogen. It relies on rotations, compost, manure, and biological nitrogen fixation - legumes working with microbes. Although organic still needs fossil fuel to run equipment, package products in plastic, and transport them for sale.

Regenerative agriculture can sit between conventional and organic, both as a transition pathway and as a way to redevelop healthy ecosystems. Cover crops, little to no tillage, diverse rotations, and livestock integration turn nutrients into cycles instead of one-way purchases.

Undoing a Deadly Bargain

Farmers live in tight margins and high risk. Many are already battered by tariffs, trade uncertainty, and weather.[10][11]

I want to name something that can sound counterintuitive: I see this disruption as a welcome one.

Not because anyone should celebrate farmers getting squeezed, or families paying more at the store, but because it exposes a fragile bargain we’ve treated as normal: Frankenfood abundance bought with fossil-fuel fertility, creating a diet architecture that converts cheap commodity crops into ultra-processed products that are making us sick.

If a fertilizer crisis makes that bargain visible, it also creates an opening for a Mother Nature Aligned System.

For eaters, the shift isn't abstract. It's with your fork.

Buying less “cheap” meat and more pasture raised meat, dairy and eggs.
Prioritizing organic produce.
Getting cosy with a cookbook that focuses on meals using Whole Foods.
Shrinking the middle aisles by making simple food at home.

The deeper invitation is to repair and re-invent. Mother Nature already has a system for us all to be fed healthy, nutritious food while healing ecosystems and ourselves. Mother Nature can do her job. The question is whether we’ll stop overriding her long enough to work with her.

So is fertilizer friend or foe? It was supposed to be a friend — a postwar miracle that would feed the world. But when a single shipping lane can threaten your dinner and your longevity, the friendship comes with terms we never agreed to in the first place.

P.S. To learn more about how regenerative agriculture can transform brown, depleted soil into green, healthy fields, watch Kiss the Ground.