The result has been an all-too familiar divide: Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Alexis Maxwell says that even though prices have fallen more than 50% from last year’s peak, farmers in Southeast Asia and Africa remain more exposed than their counterparts in North America, China or India. The situation is exacerbated by sanctions on potash giant Belarus alongside the decision by China, a major producer of nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers, to impose restrictions on exports to protect domestic supply, curbs that analysts don’t see being lifted until the middle of 2023 at the earliest.

Supplies are constrained in poorer areas. The market disruption triggered a spike in prices last summer that led to stockpiling by those able to afford fertilisers, and while costs have since come down significantly, they remain above pre-pandemic levels.

“If your stomach is full then you can defend your house, you can defend your borders, you can defend your economy.” “The role of fertiliser is as important as the role of seed in the country’s food security,” said Udai Shanker Awasthi, managing director and chief executive officer of the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative, the country’s largest producer. They’re also being pulled into the contest of narratives over who’s to blame for the fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine.

That’s pushed fertilisers - and who controls them - to the forefront of the political agenda around the world: The US State Department is beefing up its expertise on fertilisers, presidents are tweeting about them, they’re featuring in election campaigns, and becoming the focus of tensions between countries as well as an unlikely currency of diplomacy. Just as semiconductors have become a lightning rod for geopolitical friction, so the race for fertilisers has alerted the US and its allies to a strategic dependency for an agricultural input that is a key determinant of food security. Yet alongside humanitarian considerations, it’s the realisation that much of the world relies on just a few nations for most of its fertilisers - notably Russia, its ally Belarus and China - that’s ringing alarm bells in global capitals.

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