Global Affairs Expert Webinar: Food and Water Security
Caitlin Welsh, director of the global food and water security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, leads the conversation on food and water security.
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Speaker
Caitlin Welsh
Director, Global Food and Water Security Program
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Presider
Irina A. Faskianos
Vice President, National Program and Outreach
Council on Foreign Relations
Transcript
FASKIANOS: Welcome to the final session of the Winter/Spring 2026 Global Affairs Expert Webinar series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.
Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on education.CFR.org if you would like to share these materials with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
We’re delighted to have Caitlin Welsh with us to discuss water and food security. She is the director of the global food and water security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she leads research and policy analysis on the drivers and consequences of food and water insecurity worldwide. Previously, she served for over a decade in the U.S. government, including as director for global economic engagement at the National Security Council and National Economic Council, and as acting director of the State Department’s office of global food security. Ms. Welsh has testified before Congress on global food security and her analysis has appeared in major outlets such as The New York Times, The Economist, and Foreign Policy, and I commend her recent article to you, “Iran, Fertilizer and Food Security: Risks, Impacts, and Policy Responses,” which we also circulated in advance.
And I think that is a really good starting place for us, Caitlin. Thank you for being with us. We are now in, I think, our fifth week of the Iran war, although the ceasefire was announced last night.
So, perhaps you could talk about where we are and how the—what is happening in the Middle East is going to affect the agricultural security landscape.
WELSH: Wonderful. Thank you very much, Irina. I’m very happy to talk about that topic. It’s really nice to be back with CFR.
Irina, you reached out to me in October, I think, asking for an engagement with an update on the landscape of global food security, global water security, which I would—on a normal day, I’d be very happy to deliver that.
But given where we are today, I want to use this engagement as an opportunity for essentially a situation update on impacts of the Iran war on global agriculture markets and global food prices, and then also on water security in the region.
Given as we are, Irina, as you said, five weeks into the war and just over twelve hours since the announcement of a ceasefire, so I’d like to talk to you about the overall impacts of this war on ag markets and food prices, and then my outlook on what this announcement of a ceasefire may or may not mean.
So, I’ll start with an overview, then I’ll give my updates on the current situation, and very much look forward to taking questions from the group.
So, when it comes to the war’s impact on ag markets and food prices, there’s been a lot of attention to fertilizer markets, and I want to get to that in depth momentarily. But the immediate impact of this war on food prices will not come through the mechanism of fertilizer prices.
It will instead come from energy prices, which are high, and even if they begin to fall are still significantly higher than prewar prices, and this is because energy accounts for a significant share of food production costs.
Motor oils and liquefied gases—LNG—liquid petroleum gas, they power food production and processing, tractors, irrigation systems, food transportation, refrigeration. All of those processes are powered by fossil fuels. When the price of those inputs increase, those costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices.
We actually saw this bear out already. Just a few days ago, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization released its food price index for the month of March, and we saw that the price of all commodity groups—cereals, vegetable oils, and sugar, along with meat and dairy—rose in March compared to February, due, and this is a quote from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), in part to responses to higher energy prices linked to the conflict escalation in the Middle East.
What we expect to see, going forward, with food prices globally, the UN World Food Programme put out an estimate recently of the impacts of this—potential impacts of this war on acute food insecurity around the world.
This is looking only at the impact of high energy prices on food security, and the World Food Programme (WFP) predicted that the number of people facing acute hunger is projected to increase by 45 million people if the conflict continues through June, again, looking only at the impact of high energy prices.
Now, it’s very important to say that a number of factors could push this number, 45 million people, higher or reduce the number. There are so many factors at play, which I’m happy to get into later, but that’s WFP’s estimate.
No country in the world is immune from impacts of this war on agriculture markets and on food prices. I am expecting that energy prices will push food prices higher in the United States as well.
I’ll be looking out for the Consumer Price Index, which will be released actually on Friday showing increases in food prices for the month of March here in the United States.
When it comes to fertilizer prices and, again, the immediate impact of this war on food prices is going to come from energy, but when it comes to fertilizer prices I’ll talk about the impact of fertilizer prices on ag markets and on food prices in the long run.
What my colleagues at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) have said is that this war presents—this is a quote from them—“the potential for a sustained major disruption in fertilizer supplies that would threaten global agriculture production and global food security,” noting, however—and this is another quote—“that any falloff in agricultural production due to the war would likely not happen immediately for a number of reasons, but that a prolonged increase in fertilizer prices would affect crop yields, potentially leading to sharp food price increases.”
The Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf region generally is incredibly important when it comes to the production and exports of fertilizers, and this is because Gulf countries together produce and export a significant amount of two things, of final fertilizer products—of fertilizers themselves that are ready for use and also inputs to fertilizers, so items that can be essentially ingredients for fertilizers that are used by other countries to produce fertilizers in other places.
When it comes to some specifics around this, so to put some numbers around this, Gulf countries together over the past three years were the number one exporter of two of the most common types of nitrogen fertilizer, so they were the number one exporter of urea and the number one exporter of ammonia. Those are nitrogen fertilizers.
When it comes to phosphate fertilizers, another major type of fertilizers, over the past three years Gulf countries together were the number two exporter of two of the most common types of phosphate fertilizers.
So, two of the most common types of fertilizer are nitrogen and phosphate. Gulf countries together were the top exporter of some nitrogen fertilizer and the number two exporter of some phosphate fertilizer.
When it comes to inputs to fertilizer, a commonly used input is sulfur. Gulf countries together were responsible for 50 percent of global sulfur exports, and then, of course, liquefied natural gas or LNG. This is important for fertilizer production for two reasons, because LNG is the major input or, you know, feedstock, as we say, to nitrogen—to some nitrogen-based fertilizers, and also LNG powers the production of facilities that create synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
So, the production of these commodities and the export of these commodities is affected by the war that we’re in the fifth week of right now for two reasons, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and also attacks on production facilities within Gulf countries.
We have certainly seen attacks, and these are—have been publicized widely, of—on facilities that produce liquefied natural gas. That will ultimately increase the price of fertilizer for the reasons that I just noted.
I’ve not yet seen evidence of attacks to fertilizer production facilities, but that doesn’t mean that that hasn’t happened because information coming from countries is not complete and satellite imagery is delayed.
So, it could also be the case that some production facilities have also been hit. I just want to say, though, that we have no evidence that that is the case as of right now.
What we’re seeing in terms of fertilizer prices is that the prices of all types of fertilizers are increasing whether or not they are fertilizers that are exported from the Strait of Hormuz. Generally speaking, when it comes to the price of urea, which is a very common type of nitrogen fertilizer, according to the World Bank the price of fertilizers increased—of urea increased 46 percent from February to March of this year, so 46 percent month on month.
What we expect to see about fertilizer prices, going forward, is that essentially prices are likely to continue to rise as long as production and shipping from the Gulf is affected. At the end of the day, how does this affect farmers?
Well, it affects farmers in many places for a number of reasons, but when farmers are faced with high fertilizer prices, essentially they have to make choices. They have to decide do they farm the same with fewer inputs, do they plant less acreage, or do they switch to less intensive fertilizer crops.
So essentially, they have three choices to make. Any of these choices would shape the production, the yield, of agricultural produce, and also the nature of produce that’s—the nature of crops that are produced, which could impact agriculture markets later this year, potentially even into next year.
We are seeing this bearing out in the United States already. Even if to small degrees, we’re still seeing it bearing out. The U.S. Department of Agriculture does a survey once a year which it publishes around the end of March of the intentions of U.S. farmers to plant crops.
What we saw was as expected, because of high fertilizer prices, U.S. farmers are planning to plant less amounts of crops that use a lot of fertilizer, so less amounts of corn and wheat, and more amounts of crops that use less fertilizer, so more amounts of soy.
So, we’re seeing a shift away from corn and wheat, a shift towards soy, just as an example of shifts you can expect because of increases in fertilizer prices.
Depending on the impacts—the length of impacts of high—sorry, the duration of high energy and fertilizer prices, this could affect planting not only in the spring planting season, which we’re in the Northern Hemisphere right now, it could affect Southern Hemisphere planting season at the end of this year, potentially even into next year. So, all this depends on the duration of the war.
I also want to note the—and I’m happy to get into this a little bit more later on, but what we’re facing right now does have certain similarities to the shocks brought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago in a number of ways.
Both wars affect major commodity markets. Both wars restricted shipping from a major export route, and they happened around the same time of year almost to the day. It was March—February 24, 2022, for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and then, I believe, February 28 for the onset of the war with Iran.
I want to say that there are some really important differences. One is that in the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the impact was on three—on multiple commodities. It was on fuel prices, on fertilizer prices, and on food at the same time.
So food, fuel, and fertilizer were all affected in the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is why you saw global food prices spike to a historic high within weeks of the invasion.
In the case of the war with Iran, you don’t have grains stuck in ports—in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, or you don’t have the equivalent of that in this case. You have energy markets and fertilizer markets affected drastically but not necessarily food markets, and that’s why we were not expecting to see an immediate spike in food prices because of the war in Iran.
Instead, we’re expecting, again, high food prices because of high energy prices, and then impacts on agriculture markets through the mechanism of high fertilizer prices, as I laid out.
So, what I want to talk about right now, two things. First of all, I’m often asked what countries are going to be affected.
At the end of the day, just like oil and gas markets—just like oil and gas prices, fertilizer prices are global. So, at the end of the day, fertilizer prices everywhere will be increased, although some farmers will be exposed more so than other farmers.
So, some things to consider in terms of exposure to fertilizer market shocks because of this war are the extent to which certain countries had been importing fertilizers or fertilizer inputs from the Gulf. Other things to consider, some countries might have had national reserves in place, a natural—a national fertilizer reserve that they might be able to draw on. Not every country has those but some did.
Also, depending on the country and looking at the United States, for example, some farmers had already purchased all the fertilizer that they need—that they needed before this shock happened. If they already did that, then they’re less exposed. But if they didn’t, then they’re certainly faced with high fertilizer prices.
But when you look at the countries that are reliant on the Gulf for a major source of imports of either fertilizers or inputs, it’s a number of the world’s major agricultural producers and it’s also a number of countries that are food insecure.
So, among those countries, India, Pakistan, South Korea, Morocco, Japan, South Africa, the United States, Australia, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia, Brazil. Those are just the top importers. So many, many countries are affected by this.
Finally, what I want to talk about right now is what we’re seeing in the news since we saw just over twelve hours ago a ceasefire announced, and when I saw that news last night, I actually wondered is this going to change the shape of this narrative. Are things going to reverse? Will there be—will there not be the impacts that we had been predicting?
And so, looking at the news that was available this morning, what I’m expecting is that oil and gas markets will not recover quickly, based on what I’m reading, and that fertilizer markets will also not recover quickly for a host of reasons. That is because there is lack of clarity around what the ceasefire means.
Even the way that it’s described by the United States and Iran is different. According to Iran’s description, there would be—I’m forgetting the exact quote, but something like some technical factors that had to be met in order for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz.
We don’t know what that means. We don’t know if that means tolls or something like that. But regardless, there’s lack of clarity around what the ceasefire means.
The fact that this is a ceasefire and not a negotiated peace deal—because this is only a ceasefire that is very, very new, the underlying tensions remain.
Another reason that I don’t expect markets to recover quickly is that it’s not just a matter of transit of ships in the Strait of Hormuz but also because production facilities are hit.
Again, we’re very aware of the LNG production facilities that have been hit. Unsure if fertilizer production facilities have been hit or not, but it’s not just a matter of restarting transit of ships in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s also a matter of getting production facilities back up online, which has—which can take—I’m seeing estimates of up to years for the recovery of some production—LNG production facilities.
A really important factor is that shipping insurance costs are not returning to prewar prices overnight. That’s because, as I mentioned, lack of clarity over what the ceasefire means, the underlying tensions remain, and so for that reason, insurance companies are reluctant to reduce price of insurance. And when that happens, shippers themselves are reluctant to move ships when insurance prices rise.
And so, I think it’s a little bit of a chicken-and-the-egg scenario. Ships won’t move until insurance prices go down, but insurers won’t bring insurance prices down until ships move. So, I think it’s an interesting situation to watch there.
There’s radar data that I don’t have access to but that other analysts are looking at where you can actually see the position of ships. It’s Kpler data that they’re looking at. As of this morning, they are not seeing an immediate queuing of ships getting ready to exit the Strait of Hormuz.
A handful of ships, I believe six or so ships, have maybe transited since last night. It’s a very, very small number, but you’re not seeing a queuing of the ships of the thousand ships that are stuck on either side of the Strait moving.
And then one question that I have is I don’t know if there’s going to be prioritization of ships leaving the Strait of Hormuz. I’ve read about urgency around getting oil and gas ships to be exported, which I understand the urgency of that. It could be the case that those ships move first and then fertilizer and other—and then ships carrying fertilizer and other commodities. So, it could be the case that fertilizer ships remain in place for a while.
For all of those reasons, again, I’m not expecting immediate impacts on oil and gas markets or on fertilizer markets. As of yesterday, we saw that the price of urea had hit the highest point since the war had happened. We’re going to keep our eyes on that price.
And then just to leave on a more optimistic note, what could change these dynamics are that, first of all, if there’s more clarity over what the ceasefire means—and, again, this is changing by the minute—it could be the case that there was some tweet put out or some announcement put out that actually provided that clarity over the past few minutes or hour or so that I didn’t see. So, if there’s more clarity, then I think that would be good for everybody.
And then I think that the ceasefire holding in place and then actually a peace deal being negotiated fully I think that that would also give everyone confidence. Ships moving and insurance rates falling, that will also give everyone—you know, provide confidence and help markets recover.
Time, of course, will help. The longer amount of time that ships are able to transit without ships being attacked, I think that’s better for markets. And, yeah, I just think that the combination of all these things will help markets to finally stabilize and ease the impacts that I talked about in terms of energy prices on food prices and fertilizer prices on global agriculture markets.
Great.
FASKIANOS: That was great. Thank you, Caitlin.
So much packed in there. We’re going to go now to all of you for your questions.
(Gives queuing instructions.)
So with that, we are going to go first to a written question from Vikas Kumar Giri, who is a researcher at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in India. Totally butchered that. But anyhow: Commodity price control is essential to find the alternative, but without using our natural resources how can we conserve, preserve, store, recycle, and make it reusable?
WELSH: In terms of—I’m going to assume that that means fertilizer commodities and that makes me think of solutions that I have seen proposed to what farmers are facing in countries around the world, which is a sudden spike in fertilizer prices and it’s—you know, a simplified explanation is that high fertilizer prices means that farmers apply less fertilizer and output falls, which is, in many instances, correct, but also it can be more complicated than that.
And one of the—one thing that I’ve heard is that actually some fertilizers can actually stay in the soil for an amount of years and so that it actually takes a little while—it takes a few seasons—it can take a few seasons for production levels to fall off.
And then another solution that I’ve heard of—and this gets more to the question, I think—is that there can be better conservation and more precise application of fertilizers that, at the end of the day, reduces the amount of fertilizer that needs to be applied, reducing the costs to farmers and ultimately reducing food price costs.
So, I think that conservation is an option. It’s interesting to me that that becomes more of the conversation in times of crisis like this. It becomes more urgent, and I don’t sense the same amount of urgency around something—around solutions like that when there is not a crisis. I think that’s an important part of the solution.
Other policy solutions, which I’m happy to get to later, but I just wanted to note something in response to the question about conservation.
FASKIANOS: Great, thank you.
I’m going next to Mia Bloom.
Q: Thank you so much. I’m Mia Bloom from Georgia State University.
I have two quick questions. One might be really weird. If the cost of ammonium nitrate is increasing to that extent, are there going to be perverse incentives for bad actors to buy that for ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil) bombs instead of for fertilizer? And then separately, can they—can people, if the chemical fertilizers are not available, just plant more legumes next to the crops and have natural fertilizers to improve the soil? But I was—because I’m interested in terrorism, I was interested in whether with the price increasing you actually will have this incentive to sell it to the bad guys.
WELSH: Thank you, Mia. Any type of question, including strange questions, are welcome.
When it comes to perverse incentives, actually this is the first time I’m encountering that particular possible decision. I think that’s interesting. I really can’t speak to that particular question.
But I will mention something that I heard from a farmer based in the UK is that because fertilizer prices had spiked so much and also because the price of grains on global markets is relatively low right now.
And just a side note really quickly, is that what a lot of farmers are facing, especially in the United States, is that production costs are incredibly high but the sale price of commodities is so low that some farmers are barely breaking even.
But this farmer in the UK, who has access to fertilizer, said that he would make more money by selling the fertilizer than by planting crops and selling those crops on markets. I think that was very interesting. He’s the only farmer that I heard say that.
I don’t think this is something that many farmers are facing. But I just thought that was an interesting economic dynamic that, on a large scale, could have a big impact. But anyway, you just made me think of that.
When it comes to legumes, yes, that is a potential solution and that’s also something that we might conceivably see in the longer term is that should fertilizer prices remain high for a significant amount of time, you could see a broader shift away from fertilizer-intensive crops to crops that require less fertilizer like legumes. We’re already seeing that in the United States, as I said.
And another—just to note the reports that I’m on the lookout for, I mentioned earlier the consumer price report in the United States that I’m on the lookout for and also the USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report—its WASDE report—for the month of March is coming out tomorrow.
I’m going to be watching those reports over the coming months to see how plantings, production, and exports are estimated to change in the coming months because of high fertilizer prices.
FASKIANOS: Caitlin, what about emerging technologies like precision agriculture and water management innovations? Can those be used to strengthen agricultural productivity and health during this time of increased prices?
WELSH: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, and I’ll do a plug real quickly for a forum that CSIS—that my program is hosting on April 30 so just about three weeks away, on applications of AI to global food security.
So we’ll be—actually we’re having a special session on ways that advanced technologies can help ag markets and those who work across ag markets and food systems to manage shocks such as this, including through technologies like the one you just mentioned, Irina, precision agriculture, things like that.
What I want to say is that it’s the farmers that already have access to those technologies who would be best able to use them right now, and I think that that is going to help such farmers to minimize applications of fertilizer and weather this storm better.
At times like this, though, when input costs are so high, when sale prices can be low, this is when farmers have least ability to invest in relatively expensive systems like precision ag systems.
So, again, it’s only going to be some farmers that have access to those solutions, not all farmers.
FASKIANOS: And has there been any intervention from the federal government to help the farmers?
WELSH: Yeah. So, I assume you mean in the U.S.
FASKIANOS: Yeah.
WELSH: Interventions are—yeah, are different country to country.
What we have seen by the U.S. so far—I’ll mention a couple of things—we saw that the Jones Act was waived, which is a preference for American shippers carrying commodities into American ports. I might have gotten some details wrong but that’s, generally speaking, what it was.
Jones Act requirement for fertilizer shipments was waived, which will reduce the cost of transporting fertilizer. There might have been one or—I’m trying to remember.
Another thing that the federal government did was it announced National Agriculture Day on March 24 and it welcomed actually hundreds of farmers to White House grounds on—sorry, that was on March 24 and then on March 27, welcomed hundreds of farmers to White House grounds.
They announced a number of things. For example, they adjusted the biofuel mandate, so increasing the amount of biofuels that could go into ethanol, which ultimately means that they could be purchasing more—producing more ethanol with corn, which is better for some farmers, and a couple of other measures that they announced.
I will say, though, that I have not—I did not see as part of any of the activities that day acknowledgment of high fertilizer prices or steps to make fertilizer more affordable for American farmers.
What we’re seeing in other countries, China, for example, has a national reserve of certain types of fertilizer. It’s my understanding that they’re drawing on that reserve right now to support farmers’ access. A number of different steps being taken by different countries, depending on their access to fertilizer and their financial reserves to support farmers.
FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Liz Willetts.
Q: Hi, Caitlin. Thank you for your talk. This is Liz Willetts. I’m a planetary health expert independent, also with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
When I—and I come from the health sector side, and so when we talk about food security there’s always the health security component, and as I think about this issue in the long horizon, I think back on previous war times when there was a big push in reinvestment in local food economies, and wanted to see if you had comments on that, if there is support by the government to do that. I mean, back in the day, there were things like victory gardens, but I’m looking even more closely at some of the significant networks that exist for local food products as well as agriculture, and if you had any thoughts on the health security issues that will come out of this and how the health sector might be getting back behind some of these measures.
WELSH: Thank you. Thanks for that question. So, I’ll talk about this through the lens of nutrition, if you don’t mind.
But first, I want to address what I sensed as a question in the background, which is about efforts by countries to essentially become self-sufficient in food production in light of shocks like the ones that the global markets are experiencing right now.
It’s been my observation, through shocks like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Iran war, that when markets are shocked globally, countries of all sizes and economic categories start to look inward and they say, we want to protect our markets from global shocks and therefore we want to—in the case of food, we want to produce all the food that we need domestically so that we’re insulated from shocks.
In the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I saw that from countries in sub-Saharan Africa to northern Europe were trying to put—were having discussions around this. In the case of the Iran war right now, when it comes to fertilizer production I’m seeing conversation around countries trying to be more self-sufficient in fertilizer production, but especially when it comes to food.
Well, in both cases, it’s not a realistic goal to become self-sufficient in food production or in fertilizer production. When it comes to food especially, though, it’s not a reasonable goal nor do I think it actually—it would necessarily protect food systems and make them more resilient because food production and food self-sufficiency domestically might, in theory, protect a country from outside shocks.
But what if, in theory, that country were to face a shock that were entirely local, some kind of natural disaster, for example? Then that country, in theory, would not have access to global markets to help buffer it.
So, it’s a combination of access to global markets and domestic production that ultimately promote resilience to food market shocks. I just want to say—address, again, what I sensed as a question in the background.
When it comes to health implications of what we’re seeing right now, or actually of both of these shocks, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and of the ongoing war in Egypt, it’s not only production of major commodities and consumption of major commodities that changes.
When it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, everybody was talking about higher price of wheat and maize and sunflower oil and commodities like that. The thing is when the price of those commodities increase and the price of staples increase, wheat prices increase so bread prices increase.
What we saw was evidence out of Egypt, for example, which consumes high amounts of bread as most probably know, when the price of bread increases that leaves less funding available for families to purchase other types of food, particularly food of higher nutritional value.
So, there was actually a quick study that was done by IFPRI in Egypt in 2022 showing that when bread prices increased, the households consumed less meat and dairy and other nutritious foods so, therefore, affecting their nutrition status.
When it comes to the war in Ukraine, the price of liquid petroleum gas—LPG—of course, has skyrocketed. In countries like India, that’s a main source of cooking fuel—not cooking oil, but cooking fuel, and because it’s been, as I’m reading in the news, very difficult for countries to access cylinders of LPG, the price of cylinders has increased fourfold in the space of a month.
What you’re seeing is changes in the nature of food that’s consumed. So, families might turn away from foods that are—that take more gas to consume and might opt to consume foods that are processed, prepared, with different nutrition implications.
So, there’s a variety of ways that both increases in the grain prices and in fuel prices can ultimately affect nutrition and ultimately health status.
To answer your final question about steps to protect health in the face of these disruptions, honestly, I haven’t read much. Yeah, but I’ll keep my eye out for it.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to go next to a raised hand from Nagalaxmi Raman, who’s at Amity University. Has also written the question but we’d love to hear you, hear your voice. If you can hit—
Q: Hello. Am I audible?
FASKIANOS: You are.
Q: Yeah, thank you so much. It was really a wonderful session and, of course, we had very much—lots of insights.
What I would like to ask here is, what role do you think that the regional grouping like BIMSTEC or ASEAN can play in, you know, the building the resilient food and water system in the Indo-Pacific? And one more question related to this I would like to ask is how can this—how can India deepen the cooperation within the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue to address nontraditional security challenges like food and water insecurity?
WELSH: Thank you for that question.
I want to take a quick diversion to say I don’t know if this is possible, but I have a colleague who’s watching online who might be able to share a number of our recent resources with participants. I’m not sure if that’s possible.
If not, we’re happy to share some more resources later. But there are a number of things that we could share that can help to supplement the things that I’ve been talking about.
FASKIANOS: Caitlin, what we’ll do is we can share out those resources afterwards when we send out the link to the video and transcript and, actually, if your colleague puts them in the Q&A box—
WELSH: Oh, sure.
FASKIANOS: That also, and then we can—we can also include them later.
WELSH: OK. Great.
FASKIANOS: But your colleague can drop it in the Q&A box, and everybody can see the—should be able to see the questions that are in there.
WELSH: OK. OK.
FASKIANOS: Or we can copy them in.
WELSH: Great, appreciate that. OK. Thank you for that diversion.
So, to get to your question, frankly speaking, I don’t have a good answer to give about regional cooperation in that specific region and how that might bolster food security in light of shocks such as this. In fact, I’d be interested in your thoughts on that specific topic, since you’re much closer to that than I am.
I will say, though, that there is a role for multilateral cooperation in light of global shocks such as this, and one really key example that I can give is that following the global food price spikes of 2007 and 2008 and also 2011, G20 countries and some other major agriculture producers and exporters came together under the recognition that increased transparency in global agriculture markets would help to share information, create more certainty around market situations, and ultimately reduce the risk of things like agriculture market export restrictions.
In times like 2007, 2008, 2011, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when global grain markets are shocked, the big fear is that producing countries will put in place export restrictions, which might help their domestic consumers in the short term but further affect global markets, causing global prices to increase higher.
Same thing with right now, fear that some countries will put in place or extend export restrictions on fertilizers, which is going to push global prices higher. All this to say, in response to shocks earlier this century, the G20 countries came together and launched something called AMIS, the Agriculture Market Information System—A-M-I-S—and it’s—to this day, publishes monthly reports on agriculture markets, on fertilizer markets, on plantings and production estimated from major producers, exporters estimated from major producers, all to share information as much as possible, help to—again, to reduce the risk of volatility in ag markets.
And, again, this is something that grew out of the G20, so grew out of global multilateral cooperation. So, there is a strong role for multilateral cooperation in light of shocks like this.
FASKIANOS: Wonderful.
I’m going to take the next question from Thomas Walsh, who’s the president of the HJ International Graduate School for Peace and Public Leadership: Excellent presentation and discussion. My question is related to desalination. Does this help as a process or technology in helping with water security? In addition, as we hear about the vulnerability of desalination in the Gulf, what are your thoughts on that matter?
WELSH: Yeah, thanks for bringing this up. I had wanted to say a few words on this but didn’t get to it at the very beginning.
This is another area of focus of my program as the global food and water security program in light of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and I hope that my colleague can drop some of our really great resources on this. In fact, we had a really excellent piece that we produced on attacks to desalination facilities in the Gulf region.
You know, one thing that I heard—a quote that I’ve heard about countries—it might have been about Saudi Arabia specifically or it could have been about Gulf countries generally—but essentially they learned how to turn oil into water, which essentially I interpret to mean that through revenues from oil sales, countries were able to invest in high price tag infrastructure like desalination facilities so that their economies could be supported, their populations could be supported, they could become tourism centers, economic centers, and the like.
Across Gulf countries—I’m going to get this number slightly wrong—I believe it’s either 3,400 or 4,300. Regardless, it is a very high number of desalination facilities across, I believe, the Arabian Peninsula generally.
So, a high number of facilities that, on the one hand, has enabled strong economic growth in these countries, stability in a number of ways.
On the other hand, these facilities present a major vulnerability for these countries and, in fact, there was apparently a cable sent from U.S. Embassy Riyadh I believe about twenty years ago when desalination technologies had proliferated where the embassy recognized that should these facilities be attacked, then water security would be immediately at risk for a country like—sorry, for a city like Riyadh.
Now, what we’ve seen since the war started has been collateral damage to some desalination facilities, so accidental attacks to some desal facilities. We’ve seen intentional attacks to desal facilities. As of a couple weeks ago—as of a couple weeks ago, it was unintentional attacks to facilities in two countries, intentional attacks to facilities in two other countries, and since then, at least one other attack intentional to another country.
So, we’ve seen unintentional, intentional, and also threats by both sides. Iran threatened to further attack desalination facilities in Gulf countries. President Trump threatened to attack water facilities in Iran.
To my knowledge, I’ve not seen water infrastructure at least announced as a target to the extent that I’m seeing right now. I’ve not seen that recently.
The piece that I hope that you’ll find talks about, again, the huge explosion in the number of desal facilities, the economic impact of that, the ways that desalination facilities can be affected. It’s not only by a missile that might hit a desal facility.
It could be by, for example, the pollution of water outside a desal facility, which we saw in the Gulf war in the 1990s. There was oil spilled outside of a desalination facility in Kuwait, which essentially halted operations for some time. So, a lot of ways that desal facilities could be affected.
At the end of the day, I do wonder—a major question that I have, and this is something that my colleagues have proposed as well, is if the effects of actual attacks and threatened attacks is more psychological than physical or economic in impact, I do wonder if simply making residents of all Persian Gulf countries aware of their vulnerability to attacks to their desalination facilities and a vulnerability to extreme water insecurity might affect their appetite for conflict like we’re seeing right now.
So, again, there are real and potential impacts and then, at the end of the day, I wonder if the biggest impact is going to be psychological.
FASKIANOS: Great. Your colleague Joely just posted all the links in the Q&A box. We will repost it in the chat function as well and we’ll send them out after this event as well as a link to your April 30 event, I believe you said.
WELSH: That’s right. Yes, thank you.
FASKIANOS: So, we have the flyer there.
All right. I’m going next to Fordham IPED, Jet Pacapac, who’s a graduate student from the Philippines: What are your recommendations for the agricultural agencies of affected countries both in response to the current situation and for reducing risk for future shocks? Or, alternatively, what are some of the best responses you have seen so far from affected governments?
WELSH: Yeah, thank you. It’s a great question, and the answers really depend.
They depend on context, again, because farmers are in different situations in different countries, and different countries are in different situations, depending on their decisions to take steps to insulate themselves from shocks like this.
As I mentioned, some countries had access to—they had created reserves, they had access to reserves of fertilizer. And in times like this, a good decision is to—this is the time to be drawing on reserves like this so that a country’s farmers are insulated from the effects of high fertilizer prices.
I think one decision to avoid is the decision that I—is a policy decision like one that I mentioned, which is export restrictions, either exports of food or fertilizer, because those export restrictions, at the end of the day, will cause global prices to spike with many, many more people impacted. So, that’s one decision to certainly—that global policymakers certainly advise avoiding.
Other decisions include investments in the technologies like the one that Irina mentioned, like technologies that would ultimately help to conserve inputs and reduce input costs. And, I guess, tacking back and forth between domestic and global responses, one thing that I have seen that—you know, that was discussed maybe about two weeks ago, and I’m not sure if there are discussions ongoing around this, but there was discussed a Strait of Hormuz initiative that would be in the style of the Black Sea grain initiative which helped to export Ukraine’s ag exports in 2022 and 2023 after Russia’s invasion.
That is something that, very briefly, would—could in the short term help to ease—if it were put in place, help to ease global prices of fertilizers. But in the long term, it is not a solution to the stabilization of fertilizer markets for a number of reasons, and I explained that in some of the pieces that Joely shared.
FASKIANOS: Great, thank you.
We have another written question from—whoops. Well, I’m not going to the Q&A. From Larry: Could you speak a little more about the LNG, LPG with the ongoing war in Iran, Russia, and Ukraine? 2022, Europe reduced fertilizer production and global food prices soared. I think he meant to say in 2022 Europe reduced fertilizer production and global food prices soared. What areas specifically might food prices increase, moving forward?
WELSH: OK. So, one thing to note is that in 2022 the main driver of food price increases was the restriction on exports of Ukraine’s grain. It was not fertilizer prices and it was not energy prices.
Energy prices pushed food prices higher, but it was because millions of tons of Ukraine’s grain were locked in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports that we saw, and also because Russia was deliberately attacking all aspects of Ukraine’s agriculture sector that you saw global food prices spike to an all-time high, not because fertilizer prices were high.
It’s very important to note, though, that in light of the fertilizer price increases that we are seeing right now, we still have not reached the point that we did in 2022 when it comes to high fertilizer prices.
So, the fertilizer prices we’re seeing right now are very, very—fertilizer price inflation is very, very high month on month, year on year, but levels have not reached what they did in 2022.
I’m forgetting what the question was, but I just want to make that note.
FASKIANOS: I think, let me—I just dismissed it. It said it was answered.
I guess, what areas specifically might food prices increase moving forward?
WELSH: Yeah. Yeah, I guess it’s a point where I could mention that we talk about crop prices increasing, or in the case of Russia and Ukraine you talked about grain prices increasing. But at the end of the day, it’s—price increases are not limited to crops, for example.
So, if you see corn prices increasing because corn is a fertilizer-intensive crop and, you know, for a variety of reasons, if corn prices increase, well, then that’s going to be transferred to dairy and to meat prices because corn is a common feed for animals that produce dairy and that produce meat.
So, at the end of the day, I expect the price of all foods to increase—I’m thinking of the United States, for example—you know, for different reasons in the short term, as I mentioned, because of energy and then in the longer term if fertilizer prices continue to be higher.
FASKIANOS: Great.
I’m going to go next to Dr. Raman, who has added some suggestions and comments in the Q&A box. But if you wouldn’t mind just unmuting and you could add to the conversation. I think that would be more useful to hear from you directly. Is he still on?
Q: Hi. Am I audible?
FASKIANOS: You are, yeah.
Q: Thank you.
I would just—I just wanted to give some suggestions, like, if we talk about the food security cannot be at present, if we talk about—cannot be dealing from the fertilizer or energy security. So, I think this must be addressed holistically. That is one part of it, I feel.
And, secondly, I would like to specifically talk about the South-South cooperation, which offers more equitable and context sensitive pathway to, you know, actually address this food and water insecurity. That’s what I feel that we can talk about.
And one more important point that I would like to highlight here is about the whole—just a second. I think—I think I’ve not written this in the Q&A section.
FASKIANOS: You were talking about the Global South.
Q: Yeah, I was talking about Global South. Yes, the South-South cooperation is the Global South. Just a second.
What I wanted to highlight here is the—how this is impacting—the intervention that I want to talk about is how the food and security are no longer—we cannot say that it’s a peripheral development concern but they are central to strategic stability, the human security and the legitimacy of global governance, especially when you talk about the Indo-Pacific era.
So, these are something that I just wanted to give a suggestion or, you can just say, the comment on this.
WELSH: Thank you. Yeah, two comments.
I fully agree that we need to consider energy markets and food markets together. I think they—I mean, they’re obviously linked in so many clear ways, a lot of which I got to.
What I find is that it took a little while for the narrative around Russia’s—sorry, around the Iran war to include fertilizer. Once analysts recognized how important the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf countries were to fertilizer exports and they were able to include that in there, but I think it’s the job of—you know, of places like CSIS and Council on Foreign Relations to make sure that this is included in analysis and in policymaking.
And when it comes to South-South cooperation—thanks for bringing that up—that’s incredibly important—I can mention that in the case of shocks brought, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the Iran war that, you know, it’s not only openness to global markets that can help increase resilience of countries, but also increasing inter-regional trade, and there is a very important intra-African trade agreement whose specific name I’m forgetting that was put in place in the last several years that is aimed to increase trade between African countries, which I think is incredibly important to African countries to help weather the shocks brought by the wars that I’m talking about right now and also very important for the economic growth generally.
So, important for food security, economic growth, and yes, I hope that’s a good example of South-South cooperation.
FASKIANOS: So, Caitlin, I’ll ask the final question just, as you said, CSIS and CFR: What advice would you offer to policymakers and stakeholders in navigating this issue and the growing intersection of food, water, and national security concerns?
WELSH: I think when navigating this issue in particular, I don’t think that there is any solution that is as complete as returning the Strait of Hormuz to the point that it was before the war.
Any other solution I think is a band-aid and, really, at the end of the day, trade will not resume. Prices will not return to prewar levels until trade is opened up. When it comes to food security, national security connections, very, very clear examples that we’re seeing through these wars that we’re talking about right now.
Advice to policymakers is also to—you know, to consider the potential impacts of trade blockages like we’re seeing right now. Trade blockages of the Black Sea—in the Black Sea and in the Strait of Hormuz had ramifications all over the world and I think we—you know, we can talk about those theoretically and then not quite realize what the effects will be until it actually happens.
But these are showing us that we are—trade is connecting us in so many ways. We are such an interconnected world, and I think recognizing those connections, recognizing the ramifications of actions like this on global food markets, fertilizer markets, energy markets, it needs to be considered, you know, in planning and then in post-conflict recovery.
FASKIANOS: Fantastic.
Well, we have no more questions, and this has been a fantastic hour so we really appreciate, Caitlin, your taking the time to be with us.
Again, as I said, we will circulate the links that Caitlin’s colleague put up, as well as the announcement for the April 30 event. So, you can review those resources, review the transcript and video and share it with your colleagues. A lot of good information and analysis here.
And this is the last webinar of the semester. I know you are all heading into finals and graduations, so we wish with the end of year studying for these exams and grading those exams. Both sides of the coin, right?
And for those of you who want to learn about CFR paid internships for students, career opportunities as well as fellowships for professors, please go to CFR.org/career-opportunities.
I also encourage you to visit ForeignAffairs.com and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research analysis on global issues, and education.CFR.org for free expert-informed teaching and learning resources and, of course, our colleagues at CSIS, their website too, CSIS.org.
And, again, thank you all for being with us. We hope you enjoy the rest of the spring, the summer, and we look forward to reconvening in the fall of 2026.
WELSH: Thanks for having me, Irina.
FASKIANOS: Thanks, Caitlin. Appreciate it.
WELSH: Thank you.
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