Food awakening: Iran’s ripple effect

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1:18The Economist

1:26Rosie 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.

1:41Rosie 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

2:18Rosie Blau: First up, though...

2:26Rosie 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 Thanks for having us Hi, Rosie.

3:14Rosie Blau: 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? It's 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.

3:55You 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.

4:26Rosie 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.

5:11So 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.

5:49On 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 fertilizer, but it relies on gas from the Middle East to do so. So those plants are also being shuttered.

6:22Rosie 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.

7:05And unfortunately, El Nino typically hits 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.

7:50Rosie 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 the timing of this couldn't be worse if you look at when planting season is because that's when fertilizer needs to be applied the northern hemisphere and parts of africa 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.

8:58So 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 math didn't make sense. Now, 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.

9:31They 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 four 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. The 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.

10:11Some 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. These 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.

10:54And 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.

11:25In the tiny village of Bharatedva, which is in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, mobs gather to protest at the site of a Christian burial.

11:35Rosie Blau: Kira, who are you? It's 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.

11:56I 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 Chandruram 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.

12:33Rosie 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.

13:15And increasingly, Only homecoming is becoming a matter of actual law.

13:21Rosie 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.

14:07And 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.

14:24Rosie 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.

15:11They 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.

16:04There 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.

16:38Rosie 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 Devgotham, 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.

17:16It alleges that Muslim men trick gullible, love-struck Hindu girls into marriage in order to convert them to Islam. And all of this coursing 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.

17:49Rosie 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.

18:36But for now, India's freedom of religion laws will continue to make an absolute mockery of the very concept that they claim to protect.

18:43Rosie Blau: Kira, thank you very much for talking to me. Thank you for having me, Rosie.

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20:21Rosie Blau: So if you ask most people what's the difference between the donkey and the horse, they'll say it's the big ears. Okay.

20:29Carla Subirana: I recently went to the London Vet Show, which is Europe's biggest gathering of vets.

20:36Rosie Blau: Carla Superana is a news editor at The Economist.

20:43Carla 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.

20:56Rosie Blau: So one of my police horses once ate marijuana, so they did a stop and search outside King's Cross. I used to be the vet for the Metropolitan Police Mounted Branch. Yeah, and so the police horses were under my cab, and one of the horses they stopped and searched a suspect outside King's Cross.

21:11Carla Subirana: The London Vet Show is in many ways a window into Britain's pet obsession. The country has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in Europe. And the pandemic supercharged this trend as people who were stuck at home went in search of company. Britain spent about£6.7 billion a year on veterinary services. And as spending on these services surged in the years after the pandemic, investors poured into the sector. But now that momentum is fading. Household spending has dropped over the past two years and investor enthusiasm is cooling. There are three main reasons why this is happening.

22:00Carla Subirana: The first is regulation. So in March, Britain's competition watchdog ended a two-year investigation into the sector, which it started after it received thousands of complaints about high prices and opaque billing. This follows a decade of very quick consolidation because, as I mentioned, investors have poured into the sector. Most of those were private equity firms who bought up small independent clinics and turned them into large chains. The regulator is worried that this is bad for competition. and some vets agree they welcome the probe.

22:41Rosie Blau: I think the CMA have been balanced and fair.

22:44Carla Subirana: Others think that this is a bit exaggerated.

22:47Rosie Blau: I don't think that there has ever really been a problem and I just think that it was an unnecessary investigation.

22:54Carla Subirana: Because private equity firms have actually done a lot of good to the sector.

23:00Rosie Blau: For consistency, it's driven salaries higher, which has been good.

23:04Carla Subirana: The remedies that the regulator has proposed are not very radical, but still the scrutiny has brought a lot of uncertainty into the sector. And as a result, private equity dealmaking has dropped sharply.

23:22Carla Subirana: A second factor holding the sector back is that fewer new pets are coming through. And that is partly because they've become a lot more expensive to keep.

23:32Rosie Blau: It is, definitely. During COVID and the year after, there was a real spike in pet ownership, but it's definitely plateauing. And often the charities are reporting huge relinquishment numbers because people have been forced to go back to the office. Well, not forced, but lots of people that were working at home.

23:46Carla Subirana: Pets tend to need more care when they're very young. But then during their middle years, they need less. And then costs rise again in old age. So what is happening now is that the animals that were bought during the pandemic don't need as much care. And with fewer new beds coming through, demand for veterinary care has fallen sharply. And then there's a third factor holding the sector back, which is that owners are becoming a lot more cautious with money. As household budgets are under pressure, spending on the extras, fancy leads or premium foods has fallen a lot as well.

24:31Carla Subirana: Britain is still a nation of animal lovers Demand will probably pick up again As the pandemic cohort ages into its later years And greater regulatory clarity Could tempt investors back into the sector But for now, the treat-filled days are over

25:08Rosie Blau: that's all for this episode of the intelligence see you back here tomorrow

25:21Thank you.

25:51good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.