“The ship had holes in it. They fired the maintenance crew. The lifeboats were then lit on fire. And then they drove into an iceberg. At full throttle.”
That’s the assessment of United States disaster preparedness expert Christopher Armitage of the Trump administration’s ability to survive the Iran war.
He’s deeply worried about famine.
And his central fear is also a critical issue for Australia: Middle Eastern fertiliser.
“The (US) planting window is barely open,” he warns.
“The ships are still anchored. Six months of this, maybe less, and we are looking at the total collapse of the United States.”
It’s an alarming view.
But all the ingredients of a major crisis are coming together.
The US has long maintained a basic oil reserve equivalent to 60 days of imports to resist such a shock. Successive Australian governments have been dismissive of the need.
But the US does not maintain a fertiliser reserve.
Nor does Australia.
“A third of the world’s fertiliser travels through that same strait,” Armitage writes.
“And it needed to arrive (in the US) this month.”
The change of seasons waits for no President. Nor Prime Minister.
The rains come. The clouds clear. The sun shines.
All in their own time.
And fertilisers must be applied at specific points in a crop’s growth cycle. Miss it, and their yield will inevitably fall.
That means less wheat, barley, beans …
“We are looking at grocery inflation of at least 20 per cent,” Armitage warns.
And that’s bad news for nations already struggling under cost-of-living pressures.
“Food price shocks produce political instability when they land on top of economic desperation, pre-existing grievances, and eroding institutional trust,” he adds.
That reads like a menu of the homegrown challenges facing the Trump administration. And an unexpected home delivery for Canberra.
Shock and awe – the flip side
The US and Israel have smashed Iran’s military assets and executive government.
Iran expected this. So it simply used fear to close the Strait of Hormuz.
US President Donald Trump is losing patience with Iran’s failure to surrender. But he’s also angry at the failure of allied nations – such as Europe and Australia – to come to his rescue.
Canberra remains determined to paint a reassuring ‘situation normal’ picture – with a few prudent measures ‘just in case’.
It’s a different story in Italy.
Minister of Defence Guido Crosetto wants his people to know he’s deeply concerned about the fallout of the new Gulf War.
“I am forced to know things about what could happen in the coming week, and the effects it will have on the economy and our daily lives, that no longer allow me to sleep,” he warned yesterday.
European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde agrees, foretelling future shocks “beyond what we can imagine”.
These are people in the know.
The buffer of oil in the global shipping pipelines is drying up. Corporations and nations are squabbling over the rest.
Now the fight has started over fertiliser. And aluminium. And plastic.
Soon, we’ll be worried about harvests stunted by fertiliser shortages. MRI medical scans will be rationed as there isn’t enough helium. Manufacturers will shut down for lack of processed aluminium. And packaging. And diesel to distribute their goods.
It’s a depressing scenario.
But one that supply chain experts and historians have warned about for decades.
“The future, in other words, is completely unknowable – except to say we’re fairly sure at this point it’s not going to continue on the same path, either geopolitically or technologically, that we’ve been on since World War II,” notes Foreign Policy analyst Michael Hirsh.
“Above all, the post-war world system has outgrown its progenitor, the United States.”
Food for thought
Urea is the basic component of most nitrogen fertilisers. It was selling for $A686 per tonne shortly before the US and Israel began to bomb Iran.
As of March 30, it’s now $US996.
“The ships carrying that nitrogen are anchored on the wrong side of a closed strait,” Armitage notes.
That represents a crisis for ultra-efficient “just-in-time” supply chains.
It’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
“Cut the application [amount of fertiliser] in half, and you do not get half a crop. The corn plant runs out of nitrogen mid-growth and stops producing,” he adds.
This isn’t a new problem.
The world experienced a similar shock in 2022.
President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine also cut the flow of fertiliser to the world’s farms. That disruption resulted in a general rise in grocery prices of about 13.5 per cent.
Australia’s farmers are feeling the fuel price spike. Fertiliser costs are next.
“Sudden shocks – such as war, pandemics and severe weather events – reveal the folly of having a food supply chain so absolutely reliant on the price of crude oil,” argues Griffith University School of Engineering lecturer Kimberley Reis.
“We are highly dependent on a vast web of long-haul trucks to move food between growers, massive food distribution hubs and large supermarkets. Of course, trucks need fuel – and lots of it.”
The problem isn’t just war, Reis adds.
It’s being exacerbated by cyclones, floods and drought.
“Focusing on Band-Aid solutions that prop up the current system undermines our long-term capacities for resilience. We need a plan B for when plan A – the current system – isn’t working.”
It’s time for governments and families to prepare contingency plans.
Land of the hungry
At the heart of Armitage’s argument is hunger.
The US government’s Household Food Security Report, released in 2025, reveals that some 50 million Americans are already struggling to find their next meal. The solution? Cancel reporting the data.
Now, the US federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been slashed. So, far fewer “food stamps” will be distributed to the most needy.
“We are starting from a baseline of 54 million people who already cannot reliably eat,” Armitage states.
“And we are cutting the safety net rather than expanding it. The cross-national evidence puts the number of food-insecure Americans, under those conditions, between 75 and 90 million.”
Hungry people are angry people.
Sociological studies indicate price hikes of up to 70 per cent are closely linked to odds of social unrest topping 75 per cent.
Then there’s the rest.
“We (the US) entered this moment with debt exceeding GDP, inflation already above the Federal Reserve’s target, a housing crisis, and a government actively removing people from food assistance,” Armitage adds.
“Every single one of those numbers gets worse when grocery bills go up.”
But that’s not all.
Medical charges go up. Credit card debts go up. Tax debts go up. Contractors face fresh price pressures and delayed payments.
“The crises don’t sit beside each other,” Armitage warns.
“They feed each other, all at once, with the same shock driving all of them simultaneously.”
Australia’s strained welfare system isn’t yet in the same place as the US’s.
But the climate, economic and diplomatic shocks keep coming.
“Governments need to encourage people to have a contingency for tough times, when the long supply chain supermarket system is disrupted,” Griffith University’s Reis urges.
“For communities, this can mean asking yourself what’s your plan if you can’t get food from the supermarket. It might mean taking time to work out where the local suppliers are, what food is in season in your area, and how you can support local farming co-operatives.”
The Franz Ferdinand effect
Diesel shortages have hit home. Food is next. But soon, shortages could extend to plastic packaging.
Analysts say the world has to eliminate the use of about 10 million barrels of oil per day to bring demand back down to available supply levels.
We’re driving less. Flying less. Soon we’ll have to pay more for a smaller selection of foods.
But OPIS Chemical Market Analytics notes that crude oil is a critical ingredient in polyethylene resin. And some 50 per cent of the global supply has been cut by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The facilities needed to pick up the shortfall simply don’t exist.
Oil-based plastics are in our clothes, our shoes, our phones, televisions, cars and toasters. Take it away, and things fall apart.
Then there’s aluminium.
The Middle East is the world’s largest producer of this light metal. The US imports 60 per cent of its own needs.
And while Australia exports aluminium, it leaves the actual production of its specialised products to other nations – such as China and South Korea.
Taken together, these shortages make more price shocks inevitable.
And geopolitical shocks.
“Disaster must not always be the result of excessive stresses in the fabric of the international system – it may just as easily be triggered by accident, misunderstanding, or the reflex action of the deformed mind,” notes University of Bergen historian Marcus Colla.
“It is, in short, a world that more resembles Europe on the eve of the First World War than any geopolitical constellation we have witnessed since …. Had the will been sufficiently resolute in 1914, European statesmen hardly lacked the latitude to ensure peace. But they nevertheless acted under an enormous weight of pressures and constraints, often utterly invisible to them.”
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer
