El Estrecho del Hambre: El Golfo Pérsico y la Comida que Llega en Barco

Ethiopia, Sudan, Pakistan, all saw huge Gulf investment in farmland.

A ver, es un tema complicado.

Let me think about this, it's a complicated topic.

Por un lado, esa inversión creó empleos y infraestructura en países pobres.

On one hand, that investment created jobs and infrastructure in poor countries.

Por otro lado, la comida producida en esas tierras no se quedaba en el país local.

On the other hand, the food produced on that land did not stay in the local country.

Salía en barco hacia el Golfo.

It left by ship toward the Gulf.

Here's what gets me about that.

Imagine you are a farmer in Ethiopia in 2011 during the famine.

And you can see, from your village, a field that used to grow food for local people.

Now it grows food for someone in Dubai.

That is not an abstract injustice.

That is a very concrete one.

No, no, espera, tienes razón, pero también hay que entender la perspectiva del Golfo.

No, no, wait, you're right, but we also have to understand the Gulf perspective.

Imagina que eres el ministro de alimentación de Qatar.

Imagine you are the food minister of Qatar.

Tienes dos millones de personas.

You have two million people.

El noventa por ciento de su comida viene de afuera.

Ninety percent of their food comes from outside.

¿Qué haces?

What do you do?

No, you're absolutely right about that.

It's not a moral failing, it's a survival calculation.

But look, that tension, between the food security of a wealthy country and the food sovereignty of a poorer one, that is not a tension that gets resolved just because you understand both sides.

Es cierto.

That's true.

Y ahora tenemos la guerra de Irán.

And now we have the Iran war.

Y el Estrecho de Ormuz estuvo casi cerrado durante semanas.

And the Strait of Hormuz was almost closed for weeks.

Los barcos de comida no podían pasar.

Food ships could not pass through.

¿Qué pasó con las reservas de alimentos en el Golfo?

What happened to the food reserves in the Gulf?

So this is where it gets really interesting, and also somewhat reassuring, depending on where you sit.

After the 2007 crisis, most Gulf states quietly built up strategic food reserves.

Qatar especially, after the 2017 blockade when Saudi Arabia closed its land border, Qatar went and built grain silos that could feed the country for six months.

They learned the hard way.

Mira, el bloqueo de Qatar en 2017 fue un momento muy importante para toda la región.

Look, the Qatar blockade in 2017 was a very important moment for the whole region.

De repente, los supermercados de Doha casi no tenían leche, no tenían verduras frescas.

Suddenly, the supermarkets in Doha barely had milk, they had no fresh vegetables.

Había colas largas.

There were long lines.

La gente tenía miedo.

People were afraid.

And Qatar's response was extraordinary, actually.

They flew in dairy cows by airplane, Octavio.

Live cows, on cargo planes, from Europe and Australia, to start a domestic dairy industry essentially overnight.

Within a year they had local milk.

From zero.

Sí, es una historia increíble.

Yes, it's an incredible story.

Vacas en aviones.

Cows on planes.

Pero muestra cómo el dinero puede resolver algunos problemas.

But it shows how money can solve some problems.

El problema es que Qatar tiene mucho dinero.

The problem is that Qatar has a lot of money.

Bahréin, por ejemplo, tiene menos.

Bahrain, for example, has less.

And Bahrain is on the front line of this war.

Intercepting nearly seven hundred Iranian projectiles, and simultaneously trying to make sure the shelves at Lulu Hypermarket are stocked.

The double stress of that is something I don't think we talk about enough.

Bueno, y ahora piensa en esto: Irán sabe perfectamente que los países del Golfo dependen de los barcos de comida.

Well, and now think about this: Iran knows perfectly well that Gulf countries depend on food ships.

Cuando Irán controla el Estrecho de Ormuz, no controla solo el petróleo.

When Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, it doesn't just control oil.

Controla la comida de veinte millones de personas.

It controls the food of twenty million people.

That is the leverage.

And it is leverage that Iran has exercised very deliberately this week.

They let fifteen ships through.

They are choosing who eats and who waits.

That is an extraordinary amount of power, and I think it explains a lot about why Malaysia's prime minister was personally on the phone with Pezeshkian.

Es que la comida siempre fue un arma en la historia.

The thing is, food was always a weapon in history.

Los romanos bloqueaban el trigo de Egipto para controlar a sus enemigos.

The Romans blocked wheat from Egypt to control their enemies.

Napoleón usó bloqueos económicos con los alimentos.

Napoleon used economic blockades involving food.

Esto no es nuevo.

This is not new.

The extraordinary thing is how modern this particular version of it is.

Because we're not talking about a medieval siege where an army surrounds a city.

We're talking about a 33-mile-wide chokepoint that connects one sixth of the world's oil supply, and also a huge percentage of the world's food trade for an entire sub-region.

Claro.

Of course.

Y el petróleo también es importante para la comida, porque los fertilizantes modernos vienen del petróleo y del gas.

And oil is also important for food, because modern fertilizers come from oil and gas.

Si el precio del petróleo sube mucho, los fertilizantes cuestan más.

If the price of oil rises a lot, fertilizers cost more.

Si los fertilizantes cuestan más, la comida en todo el mundo cuesta más.

If fertilizers cost more, food all over the world costs more.

So you have this chain.

A war in the Gulf drives up oil prices, which drives up fertilizer costs, which drives up the price of grain in Egypt, which drives up the price of bread in Cairo, which, as we know from history, drives people into the streets.

The butterfly effect of a closed strait is not theoretical.

La verdad es que en España también sentimos esto.

The truth is that in Spain we also feel this.

No directamente, pero cuando los precios del aceite de oliva, del trigo o de los fertilizantes suben, los agricultores españoles sufren también.

Not directly, but when the prices of olive oil, wheat, or fertilizers go up, Spanish farmers suffer too.

Y en los últimos años los agricultores españoles ya protestaron mucho.

And in recent years Spanish farmers already protested a lot.

Right.

And what's the situation for the Gulf countries with fresh produce specifically?

Because six months of grain is one thing.

But vegetables, fruit, fresh meat, that's a different category entirely.

Exacto, ahí está el problema real.

Exactly, there is the real problem.

Los tomates, las lechugas, las frutas frescas, no puedes guardarlos seis meses.

Tomatoes, lettuce, fresh fruit, you cannot store them for six months.

Vienen principalmente de India, de Paquistán, de Irán, de Turquía.

They come mainly from India, from Pakistan, from Iran, from Turkey.

Muchos barcos con frutas y verduras pasan por el Estrecho de Ormuz cada semana.

Many ships with fruit and vegetables pass through the Strait of Hormuz every week.

Look, this is where it gets geopolitically fascinating.

Iran is simultaneously the country that is threatening the food security of the Gulf, and one of the countries that historically supplied fresh produce to those same Gulf states.

Iranian tomatoes in Dubai.

Iranian herbs in Bahrain.

There's a commercial relationship that the war is now tearing apart.

Sí, mira, cuando viví en Madrid y escribía sobre el Medio Oriente, me sorprendió mucho eso.

Yes, look, when I lived in Madrid and was writing about the Middle East, I was very surprised by that.

Irán y los Emiratos tenían una relación comercial muy grande, especialmente en comida.

Iran and the Emirates had a very large commercial relationship, especially in food.

Irán vendía frutas y verduras.

Iran sold fruit and vegetables.

Los Emiratos vendían productos importados de Europa.

The Emirates sold imported products from Europe.

I mean, Dubai was also, for a long time, a kind of back channel for goods going into Iran under sanctions.

Iranian merchants with UAE addresses, re-exporting goods.

The food economy of the Gulf has always been messier and more interdependent than the political situation suggests.

Es que la comida siempre encuentra una manera.

The thing is, food always finds a way.

Cuando hay dinero y hay hambre, siempre hay alguien que hace el negocio.

When there is money and there is hunger, there is always someone who does the business.

Los embargos económicos son más difíciles con la comida que con las armas.

Economic embargoes are harder with food than with weapons.

So what are the implications long-term here?

If this war goes on for months, if the Strait remains partially or fully restricted, what does the food map of the Gulf look like in a year?

Bueno, hay tres posibilidades.

Well, there are three possibilities.

La primera: los países del Golfo usaron sus reservas y esperaron.

The first: Gulf countries used their reserves and waited.

La segunda: cambiaron las rutas de los barcos.

The second: they changed shipping routes.

Algunos barcos ya fueron por el Cabo de Buena Esperanza, en África del Sur.

Some ships already went around the Cape of Good Hope, in South Africa.

Eso es mucho más largo y más caro.

That is much longer and much more expensive.

The Cape route adds roughly two weeks to the journey.

Which means the price of everything on that ship goes up, and the freshness of everything on that ship goes down.

For dry goods, grain, rice, that's manageable.

For a crate of tomatoes, two extra weeks is a crate of something you cannot sell.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y la tercera posibilidad es la más interesante: los países del Golfo van a invertir más en producción local de comida.

And the third possibility is the most interesting: Gulf countries will invest more in local food production.

Ya lo hicieron un poco con la tecnología de hidroponía, de agricultura en el desierto.

They already did it a bit with hydroponics technology, with desert farming.

Ahora, con la guerra, esa inversión va a ser mucho más rápida.

Now, with the war, that investment will be much faster.

The hydroponic farming in the Gulf is genuinely remarkable.

I visited a facility in Abu Dhabi years ago that was growing lettuce and herbs in what looked like a science fiction film.

Stacked towers of plants in a climate-controlled warehouse, no soil, minimal water, full LED lighting.

The problem is the energy cost.

Which brings you back to oil.

Sí, y también al sol.

Yes, and also to the sun.

En el Golfo hay mucho sol.

In the Gulf there is a lot of sun.

Los países como los Emiratos ya empezaron a usar energía solar para estas granjas tecnológicas.

Countries like the Emirates already started using solar energy for these tech farms.

Es una solución cara al principio, pero puede funcionar a largo plazo.

It is an expensive solution at first, but it can work in the long term.

Here's what strikes me about all of this.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis is being covered as an energy story, an oil story, a geopolitics story.

And it absolutely is all of those things.

But the food dimension, the fact that the same 33 miles of water that carries oil also carries the groceries of twenty million people, that is almost entirely absent from the coverage.

Es verdad.

That's true.

Y creo que es porque la comida es muy cotidiana, muy normal.

And I think it's because food is very everyday, very normal.

Las personas no piensan en la comida hasta que no hay comida.

People don't think about food until there is no food.

Y entonces es demasiado tarde para pensar.

And by then it's too late to think.

That is almost exactly what a food security analyst at the FAO told me once.

He said, food systems are invisible until they break.

And when they break, the political consequences are immediate and violent.

The Arab Spring, whatever your view of its causes, was triggered in part by a spike in bread prices in Tunisia.

Bueno, exactamente.

Well, exactly.

Y en España lo sabemos también.

And in Spain we know this too.

La historia española tiene muchos momentos donde la falta de comida cambió la política.

Spanish history has many moments where the lack of food changed politics.

En el siglo veinte, después de la Guerra Civil, había muy poca comida.

In the twentieth century, after the Civil War, there was very little food.

La gente pasó mucha hambre.

People went through a lot of hunger.

Eso también cambió la historia.

That also changed history.

The postwar hunger in Spain, los años del hambre, the years of hunger, is not well known outside Spain.

Franco's autarky policy, this idea that Spain could be economically self-sufficient, it was a catastrophe for ordinary people.

And food, or the absence of it, was right at the center of that catastrophe.

La verdad es que mi abuela me contaba esas historias.

The truth is that my grandmother used to tell me those stories.

Compraban pan negro con cartillas de racionamiento.

They bought black bread with ration books.

La carne era para los ricos.

Meat was for the rich.

Las familias normales comían lentejas, pan, y poco más.

Normal families ate lentils, bread, and little else.

Ella decía que las lentejas salvaron a muchas familias españolas.

She said that lentils saved many Spanish families.

So here we are, 2026, and the same dynamic is playing out in a different geography.

A government makes certain political and economic choices, and ordinary people find out about those choices when there's nothing on the shelf.

The Gulf states right now are testing how long their reserves hold and how quickly they can reroute their supply chains.

And somewhere in that calculation is someone's dinner.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y la historia de los quince barcos que Irán permitió pasar esta semana es, en realidad, la historia de quince decisiones sobre quién come y quién espera.

And the story of the fifteen ships that Iran allowed through this week is, in reality, the story of fifteen decisions about who eats and who waits.

La comida es política.

Food is politics.

Siempre fue política.

It always was politics.

I mean, that is a perfect place to leave it.

The Strait of Hormuz is an oil story, a war story, a diplomacy story.

But if you want to understand why every country in that region has a seat at the table, so to speak, it's because for twenty million people, that strait is also the road to the kitchen.

Octavio, thank you.

A ver, gracias a ti, Fletcher.

Let me say, thank you too, Fletcher.

Y a nuestros oyentes: la próxima vez que compréis tomates en el supermercado, pensad un momento en el barco que los trajo.

And to our listeners: next time you buy tomatoes at the supermarket, think for a moment about the ship that brought them.

El mundo de la comida es más frágil y más político de lo que parece.

The world of food is more fragile and more political than it seems.