World Water Day for 2026 – high fertiliser costs and the impact on women and children

With the war between Iran, Israel and the USA, and assuming a prolonged closure of the Strait of
Hormuz; the world will increasingly experience another period of expensive fertiliser. Because
of reduced fertilisers use on food crops in poor countries, women and their children will be the
main victims. If food supplies run short and food supplies become unaffordable, hunger and mal-
nutrition, will be the result.

During the previous period of high Natural Gas and Crude Oil prices, in 2008, the 3 rd world
experienced a serious fertiliser supply shortage. This problem occurred because oil production
capacity was not meeting the global market demand. At the time oil peaked at $147 a barrel,
driven by fears of oil shortages, some panic buying, and a weak dollar.

These same economic conditions are happening again, today, due to this war. The oil and gas
shipments out of the Strait of Hormuz have stopped and the policies of Donald Trump has
weakened the US Dollar. If there is a long conflict, the global price for Triple Superphosphate
and Diammonium Phosphate is likely to become expensive and eventually unaffordable. As long
as we have uninformed people running our Governments, we are going to repeat the similar
economic and human right mistakes that caused the same food security crisis, as happened in
2008.

What will happen in another 30 to 40 years, at the end of the fossil fuel era? To avoid climate
change, we must choose to end the burning of coal and natural gas. This unfortunately will result
in global shortages of the sulphuric acid to produce phosphate fertiliser from phosphorus rock.
The consequences of this will be to cause the permanent end of cheap fertiliser. Only expensive
and eventually unaffordable mineral based phosphorus fertilisers will remain. How can we
prepare for this situation when we will need to grow food crops for the 9 billion people still to be
fed?

The rising cost of food, due to reduced production of food crops, will be felt particularly by the
women feeding their families in poor countries. Every country must recover phosphorus from
wastewater. For their rural populations every country will need to recover phosphorus from
human excrement such as separated urine.

Adding magnesium to separated urine is an easily achievable method for
communities to remove phosphorus and to produce a non-toxic form of phosphorus fertiliser from urine. Over 90% of the phosphorus can be removed using this method. This form of
phosphorus is suitable for food crops because it contains almost undetectable levels of
pharmaceuticals in the recovered phosphorus.

To secure the nutritional needs of women and their families into the future, we must urgently begin to treat urine with magnesium to recycle phosphorus as Struvite.