It’s planting season, and 70 percent of American farmers can’t afford enough fertilizer to plant all their crops. About a third of the planet’s nitrogen fertilizer, the most widely used in global agriculture, must pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Thanks to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran, that waterway is essentially still closed to most ships.

It’s been described as a “slow-moving food crisis”: when farmers can’t buy fertilizer, they don’t plant as much, and months on, that shows up in scarcer, pricier food. United Nations estimates that 45 million people worldwide could go hungry thanks to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Though the situation is not quite as dire in the US, American farmers are feeling the squeeze, too: fertilizer prices are changing by the minute, soybean farmers are still facing export tariffs, and diesel costs are up, too.

In an Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee hearing Tuesday, Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman proclaimed that “food security is national security.” But the hearing offered few governmental solutions to the fertilizer........

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