Iran‑Hormuz Conflict Could Push Up to 19 Million More People Into Chronic Hunger by 2030

When the war in Iran erupted, most of us first heard about soaring oil prices and the shuttered Strait of Hormuz. What took longer to sink in is how that upheaval could reshape who goes hungry over the next decade.

The United Nations’ latest "State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026" report—prepared by five UN agencies—runs a series of scenarios about how long the shock from the conflict might linger. In the bleakest picture, damage to oil and gas infrastructure drags on for years, and by 2030 the world could be feeding 522 million people who are chronically undernourished. That’s 18.8 million more than the pre‑conflict baseline of 503 million.

Most of the added hunger shows up in two places: about 10 million extra people in Asia and roughly 8 million in Africa. Latin America and the Caribbean account for the remaining few million. The numbers are unsettling, but they’re still lower than the World Food Programme’s alarm in March, which warned of up to 45 million more people facing acute food insecurity if oil stayed north of $100 a barrel. The difference? The UN’s SOFI report looks at chronic undernourishment through 2030, while the WFP’s estimate focused on an immediate, short‑term crisis.

To put 19 million in perspective, think of history’s famines. It’s more than four times the low‑end death toll of the 1930s Soviet‑engineered famine in Ukraine, and over ten times the loss of life in Ireland’s potato famine. Those comparisons aren’t perfect—SOFI counts people who will be undernourished, not those who die—but they help illustrate the scale of a shock that rivals the world’s most infamous famines.

“The Hormuz‑related crisis erodes a significant part of the progress we were on track to make in reducing hunger,” said Máximo Torero Cullen, chief economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, in an email to Fortune.

The link between the Iran war and food scarcity runs through fertilizer. Modern fertilizers are largely derived from natural gas, and the conflict has slammed the price of both gas and the fertilisers that depend on it. Peter Alexander, a senior lecturer in global food security at the University of Edinburgh, explained that because fertiliser is traded globally, a supply shock anywhere reverberates everywhere.

“If the market receives less fertiliser, farmers either cut back on application, switch to less‑input crops, or skip planting altogether,” Alexander said. “That shrinks the global food supply and pushes prices higher, no matter where you are.”

Higher food prices hurt the poorest hardest. In Asia and Africa, households already spend a large slice of their income on food, and demand for basic staples is relatively inelastic. When prices jump, families can’t simply switch to cheaper, equally nutritious options; they end up cutting meals or compromising on nutrition. In contrast, wealthier regions such as North America can absorb the shock without drastic changes to diet.

Even with this looming threat, the report notes a brighter backdrop: global hunger has been slipping for three straight years, falling from 8.6 % of the world’s population in 2022 to 7.8 % in 2025—about 645 million people. The Hormuz crisis, however, threatens to chew back some of that hard‑won progress.

Policymakers, donors, and the private sector now face a stark choice: act quickly to stabilise fertiliser markets and support vulnerable farmers, or watch the numbers climb toward the worst‑case scenario. The stakes are nothing short of the health and futures of millions of people across two continents.