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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/09/iran-war-hormuz-oil-prices-fuel-crisis-australia-fertiliser-impact-farming>
"“Wars are not good,” says the Wimmera farmer John Bennett from inside a
workshop on his 10,000 hectare farm.
Bennett’s property is more than 11,000km from the strait of Hormuz, yet
conflict in the Middle East is having a daily impact on his life.
He estimates increased fertiliser costs and delays spurred by blockage of the
vital shipping lane could strip about $600,000 from his farm’s bottom line.
“Numbers are big in farming,” Bennett says. “Not a lot comes out at the end of
the pipe.”
Made up of about 45% nitrogen and produced using natural gas, urea has become
essential to modern cropping systems. For Bennett’s family-run farm between the
townships of Kaniva and Lawloit near the South Australian border, wheat, barley
and oats are rotated with lentils and faba (broad) beans that help replenish
nitrogen naturally. In the winter growing season, synthetic fertiliser is the
lever that lifts yields.
But the price of urea has nearly doubled since 1 January and is up about 75%
since the start of the US-Israel war in Iran.
“That’s where a lot of the urea comes from because there’s plentiful supplies
of natural gas,” Bennett says.
What once cost about $400-$500 a tonne in 2020 increased to $700-$800 with the
start of the Ukraine war in 2021. Prices are now sitting at about $1,400, a
rise that lands heavily on a 10,000-hectare grain operation already functioning
on slim margins."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
