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Mia Nurmamat

As the Middle East conflict spreads uncertainty among farmers around the world, Chinese farmers are carrying out their spring ploughing as usual and appear largely untroubled.
“The supply of chemical fertilisers for spring ploughing is ample,” an official with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said at a news conference last month, adding that domestic fertiliser prices were “far lower than international prices” and spring sowing was proceeding as normal.
While policymakers around the world have been focused on the threats to oil and petrochemical supplies stemming from the US-Israeli war on Iran, fertiliser is another global commodity whose market has shifted, with China’s hold over upstream agricultural inputs becoming more evident.
China – which accounts for about one-third of global fertiliser production – exerts a strong influence on the global agrochemical supply chain, and it has reportedly strengthened curbs on fertiliser exports in recent months.
China also accounts for about 70 per cent of the world’s production capacity for the raw materials used in chemical pesticides, according to research firm IBISWorld.
Analysts said that production prowess gave China a greater say, especially as Iran and the United States continued to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for global fertiliser shipments. Before the US and Israel began military strikes on Iran at the end of February, about one-third of seaborne fertiliser trade passed through the narrow waterway, according to the UN.
“China’s continued export restrictions, combined with global shortages in urea and phosphate fertilisers, are pushing prices higher and will ultimately affect global food security,” analysts at Sublime China Information (SCI) said in emailed replies to questions.
They said Beijing was making domestic supply a priority, with exports of key products such as urea and phosphates subjected to inspection regimes and quota systems.
There have been no official announcements of universal export controls, but some industry insiders said they had been told to halt shipments. Several told media outlets including Reuters and the Financial Times that Beijing had banned exports of some fertilisers, including nitrogen-potassium fertiliser blends and certain phosphate varieties.
In March, China’s exports of compound fertilisers containing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium plunged by nearly 90 per cent year on year to just 6,808 tonnes (7,504 short tons), according to customs data.
Charles Austin Jordan, a senior researcher at Rhodium Group, said China was the world’s second-largest exporter of fertilisers behind Russia, but its share of global fertiliser exports had declined from 14 per cent in 2014 to about 10 per cent in 2024, with Russia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and other countries having gained market share.
However, it accounted for 75 per cent of global exports of ammonium sulphate – a common nitrogenous fertiliser used in the production of a wide variety of crops – up from 20 per cent a decade ago, and a quarter of sodium nitrate fertiliser exports.
That meant China could potentially cause massive disruption to those markets, “with immense consequences for agricultural producers globally”.

Jordan said instability brought about by war and trade frictions had prompted China to carefully assess its own food security, with the major export controls targeting phosphate fertilisers and sulphuric acid – an upstream input into other fertilisers.
Brazil absorbed roughly two-thirds of China’s phosphate fertiliser exports, with Indonesia, Australia, Pakistan and Myanmar combining to account for another quarter, and he said any disruptions to exports would hit those economies “most significantly”.
Isaac Zhao Lei, senior principal analyst for China fertilisers at S&P Global Energy, said China’s policymakers were weighing the risks of fertiliser exports disrupting local supply against the potential for higher export margins.
“When the situation is complex and it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of policy implementation, China tends to adopt a conservative export approach, meaning it may delay the start of exports or tighten export controls,” Zhao said. “We expect China to continue with the export policies it has had in place over the last few years.”
Market observers have warned of the impact of reduced Chinese fertiliser supply on global agriculture. Josh Linville, vice-president for fertilisers at US-based financial services firm StoneX, cautioned in February that China might halt exports of phosphates and urea until August, given already tight global markets.
“If Chinese fertiliser is absent January until July, that is a massive, massive supply hole that’s in the marketplace,” Linville said.
Melih Keyman, chief executive of Swiss fertiliser trader Keytrade AG, also warned that a prolonged halt in Chinese phosphate exports could have far-reaching consequences.
“If China is not exporting phosphates over the summer, you can expect major yield losses in Brazil,” he said in an interview with Seed World. “That results in higher soybean prices and risks for global supply. This happens very quickly.”
Jordan said China was unlikely to widen its fertiliser export controls this year because it had to walk a fine line on trade restrictions, but those in place were likely to remain until at least the end of summer.
“Beijing is heavily dependent on export markets for growth,” he said. “If they start to weaponise and restrict all kinds of important supply chains – and especially supply chains where they are the dominant global exporter – that will only serve to accelerate the urgency for diversification from its trading partners, and ultimately end up closing off export markets to Chinese producers.”
China’s role as the dominant producer of chemical pesticide raw materials has made it a key supplier to multinational firms such as BASF, Corteva and Bayer.
China’s agrochemical sector has relatively strong resilience to external shocks
Sublime China Information analysts
Last year, it exported US$10.4 billion worth of pesticides, with the main markets being Brazil, Australia, the United States and many Southeast Asian countries, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity data platform.
The SCI analysts said the disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz “have had a limited overall impact on China’s pesticide exports, although prices of some inputs have been affected”.
“With its complete chemical supply chain and largely self-sufficient production system, China’s agrochemical sector has relatively strong resilience to external shocks,” they said.
China also produces about 68 per cent of the global supply of glyphosate, one of the most widely used herbicides, dwarfing the roughly 29 per cent share of Bayer’s Monsanto unit and just 2 per cent from America’s Albaugh, according to data from SCI.
The Iran war has pushed the prices of some nitrogen fertilisers up by between 30 and 50 per cent, and the global price of urea – the most widely used nitrogen fertiliser – has risen by 30 to 40 per cent to around US$700 a tonne.
However, its price in China remains below US$300 a tonne, thanks in large part to long-term policy planning. While much of the world relied on oil and natural gas to produce urea, SCI said coal-rich China had developed an alternative system based on coal that now accounted for about 80 per cent of its urea production capacity.
StoneX said that had allowed China to maintain annual urea exports of roughly 5 million tonnes, supplying major agricultural economies such as India and Brazil.
The SCI analysts said China had “a certain level of resilience against rising oil and gas prices and global urea shortages”, noting that China had imported less than 1 per cent of the urea it had used over the past five years.
“It does not import urea from the Middle East, so the strait blockade has no direct impact on domestic supply,” they added.
The reported tightening of Chinese exports predates the Middle East conflict, with controls on fertiliser shipments having gradually been strengthened since 2024, when global supply was already strained by the war in Ukraine and volatile production costs.
But possible restrictions have worried countries around the globe, with the Philippines and India among those to have sought assurances from Beijing as they navigate a more constrained Chinese fertiliser supply chain.
“The restrictions are best understood as a national security measure, similar to India’s rice ban in 2023,” said Xu Tianchen, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. “I don’t think China will disregard the spillovers overseas since it has been highly recognitive of its global responsibilities. Coordination on resuming the export of a reasonable amount of fertilisers is likely.”
While most governments used trade to support broader diplomatic relationships, Allan Pickett, executive director for fertilisers research at S&P Global Energy, said that strategy was not reflected in Beijing’s approach to fertiliser exports.
“There is no evidence that fertiliser plays any specific role in Chinese external policy, nor that the war will change that,” Pickett said.
Rhodium’s Jordan also said Beijing’s reported export controls were not about generating or exerting geopolitical leverage.
“This has primarily been a consideration of regime security for Beijing – food shortages are an existential risk for the Communist Party, as any observer of China’s long history would note,” he said. “Supply crunches caused by global disruptions are forcing the regime to be conservative on this front, and it has responded to domestic agriculture industry groups’ concerns quickly.”
But such controls could “exacerbate trade frictions and accelerate de-risking and diversification, as the rest of the world reckons with how China’s domestic political and economic dynamics may implicate their own food security”.
He said Brazil imported almost 100 per cent of its ammonium sulphate – worth over US$1 billion a year – from China.
“Can Brazilian farmers tolerate being this dependent on China? It’s a huge problem,” Jordan said.
SCI analysts said that as China halted phosphate exports, countries dependent on Chinese supply were turning to major alternative producers including Morocco, Russia and the US – adding that they were “likely to face higher costs and delays in delivery”.
China’s resilience is underpinned not only by its policies and production capacity but also by its resource base. The country holds around 3.7 billion tonnes of proven phosphate reserves, ranking second globally.
However, vulnerabilities remain, with its potash reserves accounting for only about 5 per cent of the global total.
“China imports most of its potash, but from the main producers in Canada, Belarus and Russia, which are not impacted by the [Iran] war, so supply of potash should not be affected, other than increases in freight costs,” Pickett said.

To address its potash paucity, China has accelerated development of domestic resources, such as salt lakes in the northwestern province of Qinghai, and extended its reach overseas through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Projects in Laos, linked via the China–Laos Railway, are gradually forming part of a cross-border supply network centred on the production of millions of tonnes of potassium chloride, the most common form of potash.
Zhao at S&P Global Energy said a more immediate risk for China lay in its reliance on imports of sulphur, which is used in the production of phosphate fertilisers. The country consumes more than 21 million tonnes of sulphur a year, with nearly half sourced from overseas – and about 56 per cent of that coming from the Middle East last year.
“It is foreseeable that the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would have a significant impact on meeting China’s sulphur demand, particularly as the phosphate industry is considered to have a relatively low affordability,” he said.
The global strains are already reshaping farming decisions. According to the US Department of Agriculture, American farmers plan to reduce corn planting by 3 per cent this year and switch to soybeans, which require less nitrogen fertiliser.
In Argentina, Reuters reported that some farmers were switching from wheat to barley and oats due to high fertiliser costs at the start of the planting season.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that prolonged conflict in the Middle East could push up energy and fertiliser costs, prompting farmers to cut usage or reduce planting – posing risks to global food supply in the months ahead.
But Nicole Pita, programme manager at the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, said: “The bigger issue is the system itself – a fragile, fossil fuel-dependent agricultural model which is not resilient and where a handful of countries and trade routes control supply and many others are left exposed.
“If we want real food security, we need to break that dependency – by scaling agroecology, rebuilding soil health, and reducing reliance on volatile global inputs.”


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China accounts for about a third of global fertiliser production, and 70 per cent of the raw materials for chemical pesticides


China accounts for about a third of global fertiliser production, and 70 per cent of the raw materials for chemical pesticides.


How the Middle East crisis is expanding China’s agrochemical influence

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}China accounts for about a third of global fertiliser production, and 70 per cent of the raw materials for chemical pesticides

China accounts for about a third of global fertiliser production, and 70 per cent of the raw materials for chemical pesticides