George Monbiot on our fragile food system

April 7, 2026·29 min·2 clips

Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane found the 2008 financial collapse wasn't caused by subprime mortgages — the system had already lost its resilience through loss of diversity, redundancy, and circuit breakers.

Energy is only the first worry. The cold open moves from Trump’s language and market turmoil to a quieter fear: food, fertilizer, and how trouble in the Gulf spreads. George Monbiot sounds alarmed. He points to the Gulf’s role in producing and exporting nitrate fertilizer, phosphate fertilizer, and sulfur at global scale. That dependence lands unevenly. Africa, he says, is especially vulnerable because many countries rely heavily on fertilizer imports from the Gulf. India also gets a lot of fertilizer from the Gulf. Brazil and North America receive Gulf supplies too, though Monbiot says they may have other sources to turn to. The host keeps asking for comparison. COVID and the Ukraine war both hit food security, but Monbiot says this moment is harder to read because it is still early and unstable. The off-ramp is not obvious. He contrasts it with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when food and fertilizer flows still had some negotiated protection. There is no agreement like that here. Humanitarian aid is also shrinking, which leaves less capacity to handle another global food shock. The food system already looks weaker. Monbiot describes malnutrition progress going into reverse and hunger rising over roughly the past decade. Climate shocks make the risk worse. The conversation moves from geopolitics to hoarding before a crisis and panic buying during one. But preparation only goes so far. Monbiot ends with a blunt point: a fragile food system under this kind of strain needs government action.

As heard by us

A sharp look at how the war on Iran could turn fertilizer disruption into a wider food-security crisis.

Today in Focus follows the war on Iran through a less obvious pressure point: the fertilizer supply that modern farming depends on. George Monbiot links Gulf gas, nitrate and phosphate fertilizer, sulfur, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz into one brittle global chain,…

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The Iran conflict is already disrupting fertilizer supply chains that feed much of the world.

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