How does a missile strike on a Qatari gas plant end up raising the price of rice in Bangladesh? The answer is fertiliser, an unglamorous commodity that nevertheless sustains much of what the world eats.
Qatar burns natural gas to produce ammonia. Ammonia is converted into urea. Urea goes into the ground and out of the ground comes grain.
Disrupt the first step, as Iran did when it struck QatarEnergy’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing facility on March 1, and the consequences travel along…
War on Iran threatens Asia’s food supply as fertiliser prices surge
