The hundred-day US-Iran war was largely read as an oil story—crude spikes, equity repricing, a risk premium over the world's busiest oil chokepoint. A peace deal in mid-June was meant to end it and reopen the Strait of Hormuz for good. It did neither for long. According to a report by The Hindu Business Line, the strait reopened for a few days, then Iran declared it closed again on 20 June, citing Israel's continued strikes in Lebanon as a breach of the deal. The costlier consequence, the report argues, was always going to run through agriculture, and that consequence outlasts every announcement. "A waterway can be declared open in an afternoon and shut by the weekend, but a supply chain cannot be switched on in the same way."
Fertilizer Dependence on the Strait of Hormuz
Roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertiliser trade moves through the Strait of Hormuz, including much of the urea India buys and the gas that makes nitrogen fertiliser. India is especially exposed: it sources nearly 70 per cent of its imported urea from Gulf suppliers and more than 40 per cent of its DAP (Diammonium Phosphate) from Saudi Arabia alone. The report notes that when the corridor narrows, the risk lands in a specific district and fortnight of the crop calendar.
Timing Pressure and the Monsoon Window
Agriculture does not run on commercial inventory cycles; it runs on biological windows. A fertiliser consignment that lands three weeks late is technically available, but for a farmer who has missed the application window, a late input and a missing input produce the same yield. The timing pressure is sharper this year because a strengthening El Niño has pushed the India Meteorological Department to forecast a below-normal monsoon, near 90 per cent of the long-period average, with Kharif sowing already slow after a late onset.
| Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| India's urea imports from Gulf suppliers | Nearly 70% |
| India's DAP imports from Saudi Arabia | More than 40% |
| Monsoon forecast | ~90% of long-period average (below-normal) |
| Strait crossings drop after 20 June closure | From 35/day to 12/day (ship-tracking data) |
Ship-tracking data cited in the report shows transits dropped sharply after the 20 June closure, falling to 12 crossings in a day from 35 the day before.
Supply Chain Resilience and Its Limits
None of this has yet become a shortage. India built larger fertiliser buffers than last year, drew down government stocks, and kept imports moving on longer routes. The report states that supply held because someone planned ahead and rerouted early, not because the strait stayed open. However, that cushion was sized for a single closure, not a second open-ended one arriving in the middle of sowing. Analysts put full normalisation months away, with some not expecting pre-conflict flows until the turn of 2027.
The weakness these shocks expose is operational: thin visibility, reactive planning, and manual coordination. The route can be open while cargo still runs late. When a fortnight of urea or DAP lands late across a single growing district, the shortfall is not one missed field but thousands, all sowing into the same narrow window. The price pressure surfaces at the consumer end months afterwards, long after the strait has slipped from the headlines.
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