A simple shortage of natural gas can instantly erase 22% of the world's total food supply.
Global food security depends on a fragile chain that starts with energy and ends with fertilizer. Natural gas is the primary ingredient for modern crop nutrition, yet most nations treat food and energy as separate silos. European countries have become twice as vulnerable to this cascading failure since the 1990s as they integrated more into global trade. A single disruption in gas pipelines can trigger a collapse in caloric availability for billions of people. This means national security now depends more on fertilizer imports than on the amount of land a country actually owns.
Cascading disruptions in natural gas, fertilizers, and crops drive structural food supply vulnerabilities globally
arXiv · 2605.06411
Global food security depends on tightly coupled international supply chains including natural gas, mineral fertilizers, and staple crops. Earlier research has examined potential consequences of disruptions in each of these domains separately but not from a systemic perspective. Here we integrate bilateral trade in natural gas, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizers, and eleven staple crops accounting for approximately 70% of plant-based calories into a cascading-impact model spanning 208