The Food Crisis Hidden Inside the Hormuz Crisis—New Recommendation
'Crisis Investing' Alert
Dear Reader,
What a week.
President Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t reopened within 48 hours.
Iran responded by threatening to mine the entire Persian Gulf.
Oil spiked.
Trump backed off hours before his own deadline — announcing “very good and productive” peace talks with Tehran.
Oil crashed 11%.
Iran denied any talks were happening.
Oil bounced back above $100.
Israeli strikes continued. Iran fired back at Gulf states.
And as of this writing, the strait remains effectively closed.
That was just the last five days.
We’re now four weeks into a conflict that has shut down the world’s most critical energy artery — the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows daily. Since the war began, just 21 tankers have transited the route, compared to more than 100 ships per day before the conflict. Brent crude peaked at $126 — a disruption the IEA called worse than anything since the 1970s oil crisis.
And it’s not getting resolved anytime soon.
Neither side can afford to look like they lost. Trump needs a win he can sell to voters ahead of the midterms — and “we backed down” isn’t that. Remember, this is a war that never had popular support to begin with: polls consistently show roughly two in three Americans oppose it. And the Iranian regime, having just lost its Supreme Leader and absorbed weeks of strikes, cannot hand Washington a clean win and survive politically.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: U.S. officials are privately admitting they may not be able to reopen the strait at all. A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment put the potential closure at one to six months. Iranian sources have suggested it may not return to its pre-war status even if the conflict ends.
We already sent you one recommendation this month to position for what’s coming. As the crisis deepens, we have a second — and it’s one most investors are completely missing.
What Nobody’s Talking About
Everyone’s focused on oil (and gas). Understandably. But there’s a second crisis unfolding in the background that will hit you even more directly — at the grocery store, not just at the gas pump.
Fertilizer.
The Persian Gulf accounts for nearly half of all seaborne urea exports globally. The Hormuz closure has effectively trapped 35% of the world’s seaborne urea and phosphate supply, with major producers like Qatar’s QAFCO and Saudi Arabia’s SABIC forced to halt or curtail production entirely. Urea — the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer in the world, the thing that makes crops grow — cannot be rerouted the way oil sometimes can. There are no pipeline alternatives for bulk ammonia and urea. It’s just... stuck.
Urea prices have surged nearly 40% since the conflict began, with prices at the Port of New Orleans now exceeding $650 per ton.
And the timing couldn’t be worse. We are right now in the critical spring planting window — the weeks during which farmers across the Northern Hemisphere decide what to plant and how much fertilizer to apply. Those decisions will largely determine how much food the world produces for the rest of 2026.
A food shock is being set up in slow motion. Which brings us to today’s recommendation.