Food awakening: Iran’s ripple effect

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1:00The Economist

1:07Rosie Blau:Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Blore. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

1:22Rosie Blau:Religion has become more political in India since Narendra Modi's BJP party came to power New anti-conversion laws are now resulting in horrific scenes at Christian burial sites And Brits are known for being miserable about almost everything other than a firm devotion to animals But there are signs that could be changing Our correspondent lets the cat out of the bag.

1:59Rosie Blau:First up, though.

2:07Rosie Blau:When there's war, hunger is often not far behind. The ongoing conflict involving Iran and America is no different. Though a ceasefire was agreed last week, hundreds of ships remain stranded in the Gulf, and America is now blockading Iranian ports. Disruption to global shipping means that food and fertilizers aren't getting to where they need to. As well as the geopolitical impact, geophysics could make matters worse. This year, an El Nino is predicted. Can a food crisis be averted? And can the world prepare? To answer that, I'm joined by The Economist's environment editor, Katrine Braik, and global business writer, Avantika Chilcotti.

2:53Rosie Blau:Thanks for having us. Hi, Rosie. Nice to be here. Avantika, let's start with you on geopolitics. We talk about oil a lot with regards to Iran, but how else will the current conflict affect food? Yes, the energy crisis that makes headlines, but a few people I've spoken to for this from think tanks and researchers keep talking about food as a long-range weapon. I think it's really, really appropriate for this conflict because when global shipping more or less grinds to a halt, it's not just oil and gas that's stuck. The Gulf, by some calculations, is more important to agriculture. It's more important to the fertilizer market than it is to energy.

3:36You need gas to make fertilizer and the Gulf is a huge producer of key fertilizers. About 30 % of traded fertilizer goes through the Strait of Hormuz and that just means it's not reaching people who need it right now. You see fertilizer plants and gas plants that supply them being targeted in attacks as well. So this isn't going through to food prices quite yet, but you have a sense that food and fertilizer is being used as a weapon. And if an El Nino emerges later this year, things could get worse.

4:08Rosie Blau:So what you're saying is that the current conflict is affecting stocks of food, future supply of fertilizer, and all of that's going to have an effect. Sadly, we always have a link between war and hunger. So tell me how this conflict is different from other ones. The most recent parallel crisis I reported on was Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And the threat of the food market was very clear. Russia and Ukraine between them produced something like 12 % of the world's calories at the time. We're talking basic things like wheat and vegetable oil. Very quickly, the price of these staples spiked and governments were really quick to act.

4:52So when sanctions were negotiated, stuff that affected agricultural goods was left out of them. There was relatively quickly a deal to get grain flowing out of the Black Sea. And the reason this time is more pernicious is that the impact on the food market is going to be gradual and less direct. The countries in the Gulf are very arid. They're not massive food producers. Food prices and stocks of food so far have not been hit immediately. However, energy prices have been hit. And this is a huge impact on the agricultural sector because by some estimates, up to 50 % of farm costs in the rich world are energy.

5:30On top of that, you see fertilizer costs rising. So it's not food prices yet, but it is fertilizer costs. And this isn't like oil. We don't have a globally coordinated stock of reserves that we can release to bring these prices down. It's also coming at a time following the Russia conflict where we don't have other producers who can plug the gap. Russia, that's a big fertilizer producer. Their plants are also being targeted in Ukrainian drone strikes. South Asia produces some fertiliser, but it relies on gas from the Middle East to do so. So those plants are also being shuttered.

6:03Rosie Blau:So we've got a pretty gloomy picture there. And Kat, you're here to pile on further gloom, I think. Evantica mentioned the possibility of an El Nino, and that's in fact what climate models are currently forecasting for later this year. El Nino is something that takes root in the Equatorial Pacific. It's a big band of hot water that may seem relatively benign, but there are global consequences to this. Having this band emerge every two to seven years on average, ripples around the globe in extreme weather events, more rainfall in some places, less rainfall in others. It's this big, massive global pattern of weather events.

6:46And unfortunately, El Nino typically hit some of the poorest regions that Avantika is talking about with weather events that negatively impact their food production. The last El Nino in 2023-2024 brought one of the worst droughts in 100 years to southern Africa. And as a result of this, something on the order of 30 million people required food assistance. That's not to say that that's exactly what's going to happen this year, but what we do know is that there is an El Nino likely to build up later this year. It's going to stack on top of already extreme climate impacts. And all of this is an extra strain that is brewing.

7:31Rosie Blau:So which parts of the world are most likely to be affected by El Nino? And is there anything that they can do to prepare? The impacts of El Nino vary hugely, not just from one El Nino to the next, but also across regions. In terms of what can be done, once the seasonal forecasts firm up, there are things assuming the crops are still being planted, such as you could distribute drought-tolerant seeds. But it's a bit early right now to be doing that. And of course, the nature of agriculture is that some regions will see that window of opportunity pass. Just how urgent a problem is this? Is there still time for a full-on food crisis to be averted?

8:16The timing of this couldn't be worse. If you look at when planting season is, because that's when fertiliser needs to be applied, the Northern Hemisphere and parts of Africa are already in planting season. In South Asia, farmers are preparing for their planting season, which occurs when the monsoon rains begin. So this is when they would be buying up fertilizer. But yeah, some of the damage is basically already done. So if you haven't applied fertilizer when you plant your crop, you can't just add it later. You can't swap one fertilizer for the other. They have very specific nutrients. Some farmers I spoke to have said they just left their land fallow because the maths didn't make sense.

8:53Now, fertilizer is more expensive, yet food prices haven't gone up yet. So if they haven't planted, they can't do that later. In terms of food, the short-term problem really is humanitarian aid. People who are most affected are those who are already on the margins, people in the poorest corners of the poorest countries and people in conflict-ridden areas. They very often rely on humanitarian aid. And I spoke to the World Food Programme and they said to me, the amount stuck in their supply chain is enough to feed 4 million people for a month. So until this aid can reach those people who need it, we have a short-term crisis, forget about a long-term one.

9:28The point of aid is really important here. And the fact is that aid budgets have been slashed. And a lot of the kind of relief that you would see in previous years, either pre-El Nino or post-facto, came from aid budgets. And so this could not come at a worse time. Long-term, I think there are some things that can be done. Some of the experts that Avantika has been communicating with point out that there's a lot that can be done, for instance, to increase soil health. And if you do that ahead of time, then it just builds in this cushion of resilience for crises, whether that's fertilizer shortage or an El Nino.

10:11These sorts of crises will occur again. And so that long-term preparedness is also really important. By definition, the people who are suffering, perhaps even dying because of food shortages, they're in remote areas they're not people who are well accounted for but by most estimates more people have died as a result of hunger in east africa caused by the war in ukraine than on the battlefield itself and that's incredibly indicative if we have an el nino this year and aid agencies aren't able to step up and there isn't a deal to reopen the strait this could be even worse Avantika Kat thank you very much thanks for having us thanks Rosie

11:06In the tiny village of Bharatidva, which is in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, mobs gather to protest at the site of a Christian burial.

11:16Rosie Blau:Kira Huyu is our Asia correspondent. Some of these vigilantes are holding sticks, others are torching homes. They are not letting the family whose relative is buried enter the site.

11:37I later spoke to a member of the Christian family that was under attack. Her name is Lolita. She says that the mob hurled a rock at her head that left her unconscious, which in some ways may have been a saving grace for her because she didn't witness what came next. Later, police returned to Chandram Salaam's grave and to quell these tensions in the village their morbid solution was to dig up the body and drive off with it. And exhumations of this kind are actually becoming more common across the state.

12:14Rosie Blau:Kira, these are just extraordinary scenes what's behind these violent clashes? So there's actually a deceptively welcoming term for the movement behind these clashes, Ghar Vapsi, which is Hindi for homecoming. And this is the Hindu nationalist idea that all real Indians were originally Hindu. And so conversions to Islam or Christianity denies this real, true Hindu identity. And so in disturbing the peace of the dead, there is this attempt to bring them back home even after death. In Bhatadevda, by the way, the scare tactics worked. Seven Christian families have come home to Hinduism since Salam's corpse was kidnapped.

12:56And increasingly, homecoming is becoming a matter of actual law.

13:02Rosie Blau:So just fill some context in for me here. How many Christians are there in India? Christians are a tiny minority. They make up about 2 % of Indians. The other religious minority that comes up in these conversations are the Muslims. They are only about 15 % of the population. And then Hindus make up about 80 % of Indians. But religion has become more overtly political under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His Bharatiya Janta party of the BJP, which professes Hindu nationalism, has been in power since 2014. And that party does not have a great track record on religious minorities, which are often presented in Hindu nationalist lingo as a threat to these 80 % of Hindus in the country.

13:48And that is the context against which new anti-conversion laws are being passed. They are essentially there to make it harder for Indians to convert to anything but Hinduism, although obviously if you were to convert to Hinduism, it wouldn't count at all because you'd just be coming home.

14:05Rosie Blau:So just explain these new laws to me, what do they actually involve? So there's been a wave of new anti-conversion laws since 2017 in states that are governed by the BJB, which rules nationally. We had the strictest one come into force just now in March in Chhattisgarh. It's an anti-conversion law, but in Aurelian fashion, it is actually called a freedom of religion law. Maharashtra also passed one just a few days before Chhattisgarh. So it seems like these bills are really picking up pace. And that brings the number of anti-conversion laws to 14 out of 28 states. And these laws invite significant government and police intrusion in questions of faith and conversion.

14:52They set harsh penalties for so-called forced conversions. And then they define force extremely broadly. they do things like making it very hard for people to marry who they want to marry one key measure punishes allurement to convert and that definition of allurement can basically be stretched to cover pretty much all forms of proselytizing you're not for example currently allowed to promise potential converts a better lifestyle under your religion the context for this is that a lot of Dalits and lower caste Hindus try to flee Hinduism's caste system by joining other religions. But in order this religion becomes a sort of public spectacle, would-be converts are now asked to give months of notice before they are allowed to convert.

15:44There is a public registry that is put up online where you have to showcase your name and then fellow citizens are invited to object to your conversion and if they object then there will be a police inquiry officially to check that you have not been coerced. But again, because coercion is defined so broadly, it's very, very tricky to convert under these new laws. In Chattisgarh, the penalties for conversion are also pretty extreme. So a forced conversion can actually get you a life sentence, or it can get you a fine equivalent to almost$27 ,000.

16:19Rosie Blau:And why do the authorities say these laws are necessary? Well, the authorities say that these laws are there to protect vulnerable communities from pressure and trickery. In Chhattisgarh, they say that the danger is Christianity, and that the victims are members of tribal minorities. The state's police chief, Arun Devgottam, actually thinks that conversions to Christianity are the biggest emerging security threat in the state. Elsewhere, if you look, for example, in Maharashtra, the worry is something called love jihad. Now, love jihad is a very imaginative term, which is basically a Hindu nationalist conspiracy theory.

16:57It alleges that Muslim men trick gullible, love-struck Hindu girls into marriage in order to convert them to Islam. And all of this courting apparently is done to tip India's demographic balance in Muslims' favour. And to stop love jihad, Maharasha's laws ban unlawful conversions through marriage. They allow third party complaints on marriages between two consenting adults. And then they decree that any child born out of an interfaith union must adopt their mother's religion.

17:30Rosie Blau:So essentially, laws that claim to be about protecting people are actually prompting violence. They're prompting violence in that they invite the sort of vigilante justice that we have seen in Chattisgarh. But they also more broadly put religious minorities under permanent suspicion that somehow they are committing a crime, simply marrying who they love or talking about their faith and its perceived benefits to others. And because there are these pretty significant drawbacks to these new laws, they may soon face legal trouble. So India's Supreme Court is currently considering whether they flout rights to privacy and the freedom of conscience that are in fact enshrined in India's secular constitution.

18:17But for now, India's freedom of religion laws will continue to make an absolute mockery of the very concept that they claim to protect.

18:24Rosie Blau:Kira, thank you very much for talking to me. Thank you for having me, Rosie.

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20:02Rosie Blau:So if you ask most people, what's the difference between a donkey and the horse? they'll say it's the big ears. OK.

20:10Carla Subirana:I recently went to the London Vet Show, which is Europe's biggest gathering of vets.

20:17Rosie Blau:Carla Superana is a news editor at The Economist.

20:24Carla Subirana:And if you spend enough time around vets, you realise that no two days in this job are ever the same. Mary, a horse vet I met in the conference, remembers one in particular.