Closed Waters, Empty Shelves

Es verdad.

That's true.

Y hay un dato muy importante: Egipto importaba más del 50% de su trigo.

And there's a very important fact: Egypt imported more than 50% of its wheat.

Cuando los precios subieron, el gobierno no pudo mantener los subsidios para el pan.

When prices went up, the government couldn't maintain the bread subsidies.

La gente en El Cairo pagaba más por una barra de pan.

People in Cairo were paying more for a loaf of bread.

Eso no es solo economía.

That's not just economics.

Eso es política.

That's politics.

And now we have Iran threatening to close not just Hormuz but the Bab el-Mandeb Strait too, which is the chokepoint at the southern end of the Red Sea.

If both of those close, or even slow down significantly, you've essentially cut off two major arteries of global food trade simultaneously.

Los houtíes ya cerraron parcialmente el Mar Rojo antes, en 2024 y 2025.

The Houthis already partially closed the Red Sea before, in 2024 and 2025.

Muchos barcos tuvieron que ir por el cabo de Buena Esperanza, alrededor de África.

Many ships had to go via the Cape of Good Hope, around Africa.

Eso añadía semanas al viaje y mucho dinero al coste del transporte.

That added weeks to the journey and a lot of money to shipping costs.

Y eso llegó a los precios en las tiendas.

And that reached prices in the shops.

I covered the original Suez closure in my early career, the 1997 anniversary reporting on the 1967 closure, and the thing that always struck me was how quickly the world forgets just how fragile these supply chains are.

Everyone acts surprised every time.

Fletcher, vamos a hablar del arroz un momento.

Fletcher, let's talk about rice for a moment.

El mundo produce mucho arroz, pero la mayoría se produce en Asia, en países como la India, Tailandia y Vietnam.

The world produces a lot of rice, but most of it is produced in Asia, in countries like India, Thailand and Vietnam.

Y para llegar a Oriente Medio o a África del Este, esos barcos pasan cerca del estrecho de Ormuz o por el Mar Rojo.

And to reach the Middle East or East Africa, those ships pass near the Strait of Hormuz or through the Red Sea.

Si esas rutas se bloquean, el arroz no llega.

If those routes are blocked, the rice doesn't arrive.

And rice is not a luxury.

For hundreds of millions of people it's the calorie that gets you through the day.

When you're talking about disrupting rice shipments to Yemen, or to parts of East Africa where food insecurity is already severe, you're talking about something that cascades very fast into genuine hunger.

Sí, y Yemen ya tenía una crisis alimentaria muy grave antes de esta guerra.

Yes, and Yemen already had a very serious food crisis before this war.

El 70% de los alimentos que consumía Yemen llegaban por el mar.

70% of the food Yemen consumed arrived by sea.

Por el puerto de Hodeida, principalmente.

Through the port of Hodeidah, mainly.

Si el estrecho de Bab el-Mandeb se cierra, la situación allí se hace catastrófica.

If the Bab el-Mandeb Strait closes, the situation there becomes catastrophic.

Seventy percent.

That number should stop people in their tracks.

And Yemen's been a humanitarian disaster for a decade already.

I remember being in Sana'a in 2015, right after the Saudi air campaign started, and even then the markets were thinning out.

Whatever resilience was left in that food system, it's been ground down.

Y no es solo Yemen.

And it's not just Yemen.

Hablamos de Afganistán, de Sudán, de Somalía.

We're talking about Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia.

Países que importan mucho y que no tienen reservas.

Countries that import a lot and have no reserves.

Cuando los precios del transporte suben, los gobiernos de esos países no pueden pagar.

When transport prices go up, the governments of those countries can't pay.

Los alimentos llegan tarde o no llegan.

Food arrives late or doesn't arrive at all.

There's a concept in food security research called import dependency, and it gets treated like a technical term, like something from a policy paper.

But what it actually describes is a country that has given up the ability to feed itself and handed that capacity to the global shipping system.

And the global shipping system just had a missile fired at it.

Mira, el caso de España es diferente, porque nosotros producimos mucha comida.

Look, Spain's case is different, because we produce a lot of food.

Tenemos aceite de oliva, frutas, verduras, cerdo, marisco.

We have olive oil, fruit, vegetables, pork, seafood.

Somos un país exportador de alimentos.

We're a food-exporting country.

Pero incluso en España, muchas cosas llegan de fuera.

But even in Spain, many things come from outside.

El salmón noruego, la soja de Brasil para alimentar a los cerdos, el cacao para el chocolate.

Norwegian salmon, soy from Brazil to feed the pigs, cocoa for chocolate.

Right, and this is the part that surprises people in wealthy countries.

They think of food security as someone else's problem.

But even in Germany, even in France, even in the United States, the actual production model depends on inputs, on fertilizers, on animal feed, that travel enormous distances.

Disrupt the shipping, and you're not just cutting off people in vulnerable countries.

You're repricing food everywhere.

Sí.

Yes.

Y voy a hablar de algo que la gente no piensa mucho: el fertilizante.

And I'm going to talk about something people don't think about much: fertilizer.

El 40% del fertilizante del mundo depende del gas natural para producirse.

40% of the world's fertilizer depends on natural gas to be produced.

Y una parte muy importante del gas natural viene de países del golfo Pérsico.

And a very important part of that natural gas comes from Gulf countries.

Si hay menos gas porque el estrecho está cerrado, hay menos fertilizante.

If there's less gas because the strait is closed, there's less fertilizer.

Y si hay menos fertilizante, hay menos comida.

And if there's less fertilizer, there's less food.

The Haber-Bosch process.

Fritz Haber, German chemist, early twentieth century, figured out how to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, and that became the basis for synthetic fertilizer.

Historians of agriculture estimate it's responsible for feeding roughly half the world's current population.

And the hydrogen side of that equation runs on natural gas.

So yes, Persian Gulf gas disruption, and you're threatening Haber-Bosch.

Which sounds abstract until you realize what Haber-Bosch actually is.

Fletcher, siempre llegas a Haber-Bosch cuando hablamos de comida.

Fletcher, you always get to Haber-Bosch when we talk about food.

Lo has dicho en dos cenas diferentes.

You've brought it up at two different dinners.

It's worth bringing up every time.

The point stands.

But okay, let's come back down to the immediate situation.

Iran also said something interesting: that Japan's ships will be allowed through.

Which tells you that this isn't purely military, it's diplomatic leverage.

Iran is already sorting countries into categories.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Japón importa mucho petróleo del Golfo, y también exporta muchos productos a Oriente Medio.

Japan imports a lot of oil from the Gulf, and also exports many products to the Middle East.

Irán no quiere hacer enemigos innecesarios.

Iran doesn't want to make unnecessary enemies.

Así que dicen: los barcos japoneses pueden pasar.

So they say: Japanese ships can pass.

Eso es un mensaje para el resto del mundo: negocia con nosotros o tu comida no llega.

That's a message to the rest of the world: negotiate with us or your food doesn't arrive.

Using food access as geopolitical leverage.

It's not new, but it's always ugly when you see it clearly.

I think about the blockade of Qatar in 2017, when Saudi Arabia closed the land border and suddenly Qatar, which imported something like 80 percent of its food through Saudi Arabia, had to airlift dairy cows from Europe.

Actual cows, on planes.

Sí, lo recuerdo bien.

Yes, I remember it well.

Y Qatar aprendió la lección.

And Qatar learned the lesson.

Empezó a construir granjas hidropónicas dentro del país, en el desierto, con aire acondicionado.

It started building hydroponic farms inside the country, in the desert, with air conditioning.

Hoy Qatar produce bastante leche fresca localmente.

Today Qatar produces quite a lot of fresh milk locally.

Fue una lección muy cara, pero aprendieron.

It was a very expensive lesson, but they learned.

Air-conditioned dairy farms in the desert.

Which is either an engineering triumph or a sign that something has gone very wrong with how we've organized the world's food supply, depending on how you look at it.

Las dos cosas pueden ser verdad al mismo tiempo.

Both things can be true at the same time.

Pero hay un tema más grande aquí.

But there's a bigger issue here.

La crisis del estrecho de Ormuz muestra que el sistema de comercio global de alimentos es muy eficiente cuando todo va bien, pero muy frágil cuando hay un problema.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis shows that the global food trade system is very efficient when everything goes well, but very fragile when there's a problem.

No hay mucho margen de error.

There's not much margin for error.

Just-in-time supply chains.

The whole logic of modern food distribution is that you don't hold inventory, you keep things moving.

It's efficient in the sense that it cuts costs, but it means the buffer between normal and crisis is almost nothing.

A few weeks of disruption and you start seeing empty shelves, not in Yemen, I mean, everywhere.

Recuerdo el principio de la pandemia, en 2020.

I remember the start of the pandemic, in 2020.

En España, la gente compró mucha harina, mucho aceite, mucha pasta.

In Spain, people bought a lot of flour, a lot of oil, a lot of pasta.

Los supermercados se quedaron sin stock en pocos días.

Supermarkets ran out of stock in a few days.

Y eso fue solo porque la gente tenía miedo.

And that was just because people were scared.

No fue una interrupción real del suministro.

It wasn't a real supply disruption.

Con el estrecho de Ormuz, el problema puede ser mucho más serio.

With the Strait of Hormuz, the problem could be much more serious.

The panic buying accelerates the shortage it's trying to prevent.

Classic.

Though I'll say, what you're describing in Spain in 2020 was mild compared to what I saw in Beirut in 2020 after the port explosion.

Half the country's grain storage went up in that blast.

Lebanon was importing something like 85 percent of its food, and the main port was rubble.

That's what a real supply disruption looks like.

El Líbano todavía no se ha recuperado de eso.

Lebanon still hasn't recovered from that.

Y ahora hay una nueva guerra en el Líbano.

And now there's a new war in Lebanon.

La situación para la gente normal es muy difícil.

The situation for ordinary people is very difficult.

Comprar comida es cada vez más caro cuando el país ya estaba en crisis económica.

Buying food is getting more and more expensive when the country was already in economic crisis.

And all of this is connected.

The Lebanon war is one reason Iran is pausing talks.

Iran pausing talks causes Hormuz fears.

Hormuz fears push oil up 8%.

Oil up 8% pushes food prices up.

Food prices up hit Lebanon harder than almost anyone.

It's a loop that punishes civilians at every turn.

Eso es algo que los políticos no dicen claramente.

That's something politicians don't say clearly.

Cuando hablan de sanciones o de bloqueos, hablan de presión sobre los gobiernos.

When they talk about sanctions or blockades, they talk about pressure on governments.

Pero la presión llega primero a la gente en el mercado.

But the pressure arrives first to ordinary people in the market.

El político come bien.

The politician eats well.

El ciudadano paga más por el pan.

The citizen pays more for bread.

That's been true since at least the Iraq sanctions in the nineties.

The U.N.'s own studies found the sanctions killed somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 children.

Saddam Hussein stayed comfortable.

The weapon of economic pressure has always been most lethal at the bottom of the food chain, literally.

La FAO, la organización de alimentos de la ONU, lleva años diciendo que el mundo produce suficiente comida para todas las personas.

The FAO, the UN's food organization, has been saying for years that the world produces enough food for every person.

El problema no es la producción.

The problem isn't production.

El problema es la distribución.

The problem is distribution.

Y cuando las rutas de distribución se cortan, el problema aparece muy rápido.

And when the distribution routes are cut, the problem appears very fast.

Amartya Sen said something similar about famines, that they're almost never caused by an absolute lack of food, they're caused by failures of entitlement, meaning who can access what.

And access is exactly what gets cut when a strait closes and shipping prices double.

Y hay algo más.

And there's something else.

El trigo ucraniano.

Ukrainian wheat.

Antes de la guerra de Rusia contra Ucrania, Ucrania exportaba mucho trigo al mundo, especialmente a países de África y Oriente Medio.

Before Russia's war against Ukraine, Ukraine exported a lot of wheat to the world, especially to countries in Africa and the Middle East.

La guerra redujo esas exportaciones mucho.

The war reduced those exports a lot.

Y ahora el estrecho de Ormuz también tiene problemas.

And now the Strait of Hormuz also has problems.

Hay demasiadas crisis al mismo tiempo.

There are too many crises at the same time.

You're stacking crises.

That's the compounding problem.

Any one of these, Ukraine, Hormuz, Red Sea, climate impacts on harvests, you could manage.

But they're not arriving one at a time.

And the countries with the least capacity to absorb shocks are the ones getting hit by all of them simultaneously.

Oye, Fletcher, yo quiero preguntarte una cosa.

Hey, Fletcher, I want to ask you something.

Esta mañana vi que dijiste la palabra "hambruna" en inglés, famine.

This morning I noticed you used the word famine in English.

Pero en español tenemos dos palabras: "hambre" y "hambruna".

But in Spanish we have two words: hambre and hambruna.

Y son diferentes.

And they're different.

¿Sabes la diferencia?

Do you know the difference?

Hambre I know.

Hunger.

But hambruna, I'd guess it means something like famine, but I suspect there's more to it than that.

Sí.

Yes.

"Hambre" es el sentimiento normal, cuando tienes el estómago vacío.

Hambre is the normal feeling, when your stomach is empty.

"Hambruna" es mucho más grave.

Hambruna is much more serious.

Es cuando muchas personas no tienen comida durante mucho tiempo, cuando hay crisis colectiva.

It's when many people have no food for a long time, when there's collective crisis.

El sufijo "una" en español convierte algo individual en algo masivo y catastrófico.

The suffix 'una' in Spanish turns something individual into something massive and catastrophic.

Como "nevada" de "nieve", o "granizada" de "granizo".

Like nevada from nieve, or granizada from granizo.

So it's an intensifying suffix that implies scale and collective suffering.

Like the difference in English between being cold and a blizzard.

Though I notice English just borrows the word famine from French and calls it a day, whereas Spanish built the word from inside its own vocabulary.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y tiene más fuerza emocional.

And it has more emotional force.

Cuando un periodista español escribe "hambruna", el lector entiende que no estamos hablando de dietas ni de ricos que no desayunan.

When a Spanish journalist writes hambruna, the reader understands we're not talking about diets or wealthy people skipping breakfast.

Estamos hablando de una crisis humana real.

We're talking about a real human crisis.

La palabra lleva el peso dentro.

The word carries the weight inside it.

The word carries the weight inside it.

After everything we've talked about today, that feels like the right place to land.

Y si alguien intenta decir "hambruna" con el acento de Texas y suena como otra cosa, no me hago responsable.

And if someone tries to say hambruna with a Texas accent and it comes out sounding like something else, I take no responsibility.