In the end, it usually comes down to numbers. Figures scrawled on the back of an envelope, say, or blinking numbers on a computer spreadsheet. Maybe even 58,281 names inscribed on two, long black granite walls that slice like scars on the National Mall.
So, too, it is with the “it’s-not-a-war” war that the U.S. and Israel ignited in the Middle East Feb. 28. Its success, failure or stalemate will depend largely on “the numbers” like the bouncing price of crude oil, the depth of the U.S. arsenal and how many “boots on the ground” might be required to “finish the job.”
Its immediate effect — increasing the world’s crude oil price from less-than $70-per-barrel to a panic-driven $100 before dancing around $90 — was both predictable and revealing.
Predictable in that any threat to even a small portion of the global oil supply is a huge threat to every nation. Crude oil prices, like it or not, often shape the world’s economies and geo-politics.
Second, Big Oil’s expansive “drill, baby, drill” push was sold as the best — and maybe only way — to insulate Americans from global price shocks brought by war or embargo. We now learn, again, that that was an empty promise built on empty words.
The proof is simple: Are today’s fuel prices at the corner gas station the same or more than before the Iran campaign began? And what of the about-to-be-needed flood of diesel fuel for spring tillage and planting; is it the same price as last month?
Those higher prices are fact, not fiction like the drill-until-we-drop pronouncements of climate-denying politicians and greedy industry executives.
A similar logic drives much of the U.S. ethanol industry: that it insulates American gasoline buyers from global oil shocks. Does it?
Much of oil’s price rise is tied to the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile-wide, 100-mile-long slot that 20% of the world’s oil must traverse to get to Western markets. Prior to Feb. 28, an average 138 ships passed through it every 24 hours. The following week it averaged two.
Also bottled up were the key ingredients U.S. farmers depend on to make nitrogen and other key fertilizers. “’It’s bad — there’s no other way of putting it,’” Chris Lawson, the vice president of a London-based commodity research firm, told the New York Times March 9.
It’s bad because the numbers are bad: “Five primary fertilizer exporters — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain,” noted the Times, “… supply more than one-third of the world’s trade in urea, a dominant form of nitrogen fertilizer, as well as one-fourth of… ammonia…”
All rely “heavily on the Strait of Hormuz to export their wares.”
With the strait closed, Reuters reported, “Prices for fertilizer jumped from $516 per metric ton… to up to $683 at the import hub of New Orleans.” Worse, “Prices could bump higher if the Persian Gulf closure persists and shipments can’t make it in time for spring planting.”
“Literally,” another market analyst told Reuters, “This could not happen at a worst time of the year.”
The same is partly true for the rallying grain market. After being stuck in an oversupply ditch for almost a year, soybean futures had climbed 15% in February and wheat spurted up 18% while corn prices remained flat. Global demand, it seemed, had finally returned to U.S. grain markets.
Then the bombs began to drop. They rattled the corn market awake and wheat and soybeans continued their modest rallies. Soon, however, all paused to wait, inevitably, for better numbers to give them direction.
If only the rest of us could do the same.
(The Farm and Food File is published weekly throughout the U.S. and Canada. Contact information is posted at farmandfoodfile.com. © 2026 ag comm)
