Katrin is away this week; I’ll be your host. We’re going to start the week by looking at the trouble in the world’s breadbaskets.
One of the most ominous facets of the war in Iran has been the effect on fertilizer prices. Thanks to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, they shot up at exactly the wrong time — during the spring planting season in the Northern Hemisphere. The consequences are still playing out, but they will come at a time when the world is already facing high food prices.
Today, my colleague Somini Sengupta writes about that all-important staple: wheat.
Instant noodles. Hot chapatis. Sliced bread. Wheat is at the heart of the modern diet. But this year, the breadbaskets of the world are in trouble.
Heat and drought have diminished harvests in some of the biggest wheat-producing countries. What little wheat is being harvested is now more expensive to transport, thanks to war and weather.
The simultaneous troubles reveal the risks inherent in the global food system today. Only a few crops, like wheat, provide most of the world’s calories. Relatively few governments dominate the export of wheat, including Russia, Canada, the United States, Ukraine and the European Union. Their customers are mainly low-income countries that no longer grow much of the food their people eat.
“The system we currently have in place depends on three things: seamless trade, cheap energy, stable climate,” said Evan Fraser, a professor who studies the global food system at the University of Guelph in Ontario. “Today, it seems none of these assumptions are met.”
War, weather and wheat
Russia and Ukraine together account for nearly a third of the wheat that the world buys. When Russia invaded Ukraine and blocked its Black Sea grain trade in 2022 at the beginning of their war, the sharp increase in global food prices put tens of millions of people at increased risk of acute food insecurity.
The grain eventually started flowing again, and prices fell from their peak. But this year, just as harvests began, Russian and Ukrainian grain shipments have once again nearly ground to a halt.
In recent weeks, both Russia and Ukraine have stepped up their attacks on each other’s grain export terminals and ships in the Black Sea. In the critical Russian Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, grain terminals suspended operations after a drone attack this month.
That attack followed a Russian bombing campaign against the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, which Ukraine relies on to get its grain out. The Danube River is a potential alternative — but water levels plummeted this year because of drought.
In other years, the world might have been able to rely on European wheat producers to pick up some of the slack. But not this year.
France, which is the E.U.’s largest wheat producer, expects lower yields because of record heat this summer, according to government projections. Germany’s main farmers group said on Tuesday that yields were down for several crops, including wheat. In July, the European trade group for agricultural commodities, Coceral, issued a special bulletin, estimating lower grain yields of 286.6 million metric tons this year, compared with 310 million metric tons in 2025, for the continent and for Britain.
Australia, also a major wheat exporter, planted fewer acres of wheat because of high fertilizer costs, stemming from the Strait of Hormuz closure. The U.S. is about to have its worst wheat harvest since 1970, largely because of a terrible drought in the Great Plains.
A wake-up call
Few things are as politically potent as the price of bread. Wheat prices were already at a three-year high in July, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. The rising prices will put enormous pressure on governments that are forced to buy high and then help subsidize the costs to keep bread prices within reach.
Egypt, which buys most of its wheat from abroad, including from Russia and Ukraine, has tried to bolster wheat production at home, with the government offering higher prices to farmers. Still, Egypt remains far from reaching anything close to self-sufficiency. There is simply not enough water to produce what the country needs.
Then there are President Trump’s tariffs. To try to avoid additional higher rates, some wheat-importing emerging economies, such as Bangladesh, agreed to buy substantial amounts of U.S. wheat.
That means they are obliged to pay whatever price U.S. wheat goes for, even if it is substantially higher than what other countries are offering. Analysts in Bangladesh have denounced the deal as unfair.
The one saving grace this year is that the world had a bumper crop of wheat in 2025. There is still leftover grain stored in the silos of farmers, traders and government reserves.
But the year should serve as a wake-up call, experts say. The world is enormously dependent on a handful of breadbaskets; when something goes wrong, there are few other options.
“It is naïve to think we can rely on a food system built for a different era,” Fraser said. “And so we need to reimagine how to feed ourselves.”
Canada ‘at war’ with the U.S. over trade
Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada was under attack by Trump’s 50 percent tariffs and was “at war” with the U.S.
Carney blamed unspecified last-minute demands for the collapse of trade negotiations late Friday. “They asked too much and offered too little,” Carney said on Saturday. “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump wrote yesterday in a social media post.
By walking away, Carney chose a road that no major U.S. ally has taken: With his country’s economy on the line, he stood up to Trump and refused to accept a new trade relationship with tariffs baked in. Many Canadians are behind him, but his tack will be costly.
Here’s what else to know about the trade war.
When wages are low and activities are pricey, some New Yorkers are finding new ways of socializing at home. In a city where “40 bucks fall out of your pocket — easily,” as one resident put it, people are turning down invitations to go out on the town and hosting stay-in nights instead.
My colleague John Eligon, who covers South Africa, took a nine-kilometer walk between two townships in Cape Town to show how the legacy of apartheid endures more than 30 years later. Join him.
He’s 89, he hates matcha and he’s a TikTok star
Werner Kalecinski wanted to try something new. For months, as he took care of his ailing wife, he felt his own vigor wane. He needed a project and thought he’d give TikTok a try, though he didn’t understand it.
Since then, he’s built a following based on things he doesn’t understand. In the beginning, he thought “influencer” was a form of influenza. And he still hasn’t found a matcha latte he likes. He’s part of a growing cast of elder influencers who have gained traction among younger users. Read more about Kalecinski’s viral moment.
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