The short-term world food crisis caused by the conflict in West Asia is superimposed on a far graver, deeper and longer-running risk of a collapse in global food production caused by the remorseless combination of climate change and losses of soil, water and biodiversity.

“Acute food insecurity and malnutrition levels remain alarmingly high and deeply entrenched, with crises increasingly concentrated in a core group of countries”, says the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2026. Over 266 million people in 47 countries are facing acute food scarcity, a number which has doubled in ten years. Overall, 690 million people are malnourished.

Meanwhile the Gulf War is menacing farm production, even in countries that deem themselves food secure, by choking off up to >30 per cent of world fertiliser supplies and boosting prices beyond many farmers’ ability to pay. The US, for example, depends on imports from the Gulf for >25 per cent of its fertiliser needs – and is thus shooting itself in its breadbasket by combining with Iran to blockade them.

The impact of the fertiliser choke-off is already affecting crop plantings across the northern hemisphere, heralding sharp rises in global consumer food prices before the end of 2026. The FAO food price index has already started to climb in anticipation.

Figure 1. Key fertiliser products originating from the Persian Gulf. Source: IFPRI

These are but surface phenomena in the picture of growing global food insecurity caused by human overpopulation, overconsumption and their catastrophic impacts on soil, water, climate and biodiversity.

A silent disaster is unfolding in the world’s food producing soils: erosion, loss of organic carbon, nutrient depletion, salinisation, acidification, chemical pollution, loss of soil biodiversity, soil sealing and urban sprawl. To these have lately been added two more: the damage caused by wars and the destruction of large areas of productive soils by mining and energy extraction.

The soil supplies 94 per cent of humanity’s food needs. Its dramatic decline foreshadows the........

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