Why a Global Food-Price Index Cannot Capture the Full Hormuz Shock

The Strait of Hormuz lost almost all its normal commercial shipping traffic at the peak of the 2026 disruption, yet the consequences for global food prices remain statistically unresolved. The contrast exposes a weakness in how supply crises are assessed: international commodity benchmarks cannot fully reveal the cost of keeping imports moving into a region whose usual maritime gateway has become unreliable.

The issue is examined in the study The 2026 Strait of Hormuz Shipping Disruption: Empirical Assessment of Maritime Transit Collapse, Food Price Dynamics, and Multimodal Logistics Resilience, published in Sustainability by Ahmadreza Goharbakhsh, Haniyeh Rahbari and Kayvan Aghabayk. The researchers, affiliated with the University of Tehran and Islamic Azad University's Central Tehran Branch, combine vessel tracking, food-price analysis and transport scenarios to examine the disruption's implications.

Their findings bring an uncomfortable trade-off into view. Alternative routes can offer lower delivery costs than direct shipping burdened by crisis insurance charges, while producing substantially higher operational emissions than normal maritime transport. Food-security resilience consequently involves more than finding another route: it requires understanding who can afford the replacement, how much capacity it offers and what environmental costs accompany it.

A Shipping Collapse the Global Food Index Cannot Fully Capture

The study records a 95.1% fall in average daily commercial vessel transits through Hormuz during March–May 2026, from a pre-crisis baseline of 74.1 to 3.62. Dry bulk movements, which include vessels carrying grain and agricultural inputs, declined by 88.8%, from 12.0 to 1.35 daily transits. These figures document the scale of lost shipping access, although they do not establish the exact volume of food cargo affected.

The subsequent recovery remained limited. Between June 17 and August 9, the researchers recorded an average of 8.83 daily transits, still 88.1% below baseline. Comparisons with other major chokepoints showed no equivalent collapse during the peak period, supporting the interpretation of a concentrated corridor disruption rather than a general contraction in world shipping.

To examine economic transmission, the authors combine vessel data covering 28 chokepoints with 91 monthly observations from January 2019 to July 2026. Their models detect no statistically significant response in the global food-price benchmark over the short horizons that can meaningfully capture the disruption. The result leaves the price effect uncertain; it does not demonstrate that the interruption was economically harmless.

The FAO Food Price Index tracks export quotations at international trading hubs, excluding destination-specific freight and insurance charges and domestic retail prices. A shipment can therefore become more expensive to deliver into the Gulf without a corresponding movement in the export price recorded by the index. Local affordability requires separate evidence.

The Cheaper Crisis Route Can Carry the Larger Carbon Bill

Hormuz presents a particular logistical challenge because it provides maritime access to ports inside the Persian Gulf. Sailing around a distant coastline cannot simply replace that entrance. Cargo diverted to ports outside the strait must reach its destination through additional transport arrangements, bringing roads, inland connections and handling capacity into the food-security calculation.

The study's illustrative cost benchmarks show how insurance risk can overturn the usual economics of transport. Direct shipping is priced at $850 per standard twenty-foot container equivalent under normal conditions, rising to $3,400 during the crisis. Combined sea-and-land alternatives are quoted at $1,650 through Sohar, $2,250 through Salalah and $2,800 through Jeddah. These are scenario benchmarks, not prices applicable to every shipment.

The comparison also resolves an apparent contradiction in the findings. The authors report structural transport-cost penalties of 2.4–4.2 times per tonne-kilometre for the land-bridge alternatives. Yet higher costs for moving cargo over a given distance do not necessarily translate into a larger overall bill when the direct maritime option carries exceptional war-risk charges. The relevant commercial comparison changes with crisis conditions.

The carbon comparison points in the opposite direction. For 1,000 tonnes of cargo, the researchers calculate 44.7 tonnes of operational CO₂ for the representative direct maritime route, against 65.6 via Sohar, 128.0 via Jeddah and 158.3 via Salalah. The alternatives therefore produce 1.47–3.54 times the baseline emissions. These engineering calculations illustrate route-level trade-offs rather than measuring the disruption's actual total carbon footprint.

The policy implication is that preserving delivery and reducing emissions can pull in different directions during an emergency. The particularly large penalty associated with the longer Salalah trucking leg suggests why the design of onward connections deserves attention. Evaluating alternative ports solely on their availability could overlook substantial differences in the financial and environmental performance of the full journey.

Food Security Depends on Who Can Afford the Workaround

The paper's country-exposure scenarios suggest that similar transport pressures can impose very different burdens. Governments with fiscal resources and strategic stocks have more options for absorbing disruption than import-dependent economies facing foreign-exchange shortages. The country-level monetary estimates are illustrative calculations, however, and should not be presented as verified national losses or proof that particular populations were successfully protected.

For development policy, this distinction shifts attention from the existence of alternative routes to access to them. A functioning logistics corridor offers limited protection to an importer unable to finance higher working-capital requirements or to households unable to absorb higher delivered prices. Those consequences require local investigation; the study's global price model does not measure their distribution across income groups.

The authors discuss strategic food stocks and commercial rerouting as plausible buffers against immediate disruption. Their statistical results do not isolate how much protection either mechanism provided. An analytical priority for governments and development agencies is therefore to track inventories, delivery delays and landed food costs together, so emergency decisions do not depend entirely on an international commodity index.

Longer-term planning could compare investments in storage, alternative gateways and lower-emission onward transport. Businesses would benefit from evaluating total delivery costs and reliability under both normal and crisis conditions. Such investments involve trade-offs: additional capacity requires financing and may be used infrequently, while extensive reliance on diesel trucking can increase emissions. The paper does not establish the optimal balance or calculate investment returns.

An Inconclusive Price Signal Leaves Major Questions Open

The study's strongest evidence concerns the physical loss of shipping access. Daily vessel tracking provides a detailed record, while comparisons across chokepoints help place the disruption in context. Its price analysis faces a harder identification problem: one crisis, few post-disruption observations and no unaffected comparison group make it difficult to separate the Hormuz effect from other forces moving international food markets.

The timing constraint is fundamental. Although the models report several horizons, the authors restrict substantive interpretation of the crisis response to the disruption month through three months ahead. The five- and six-month estimates rely largely on pre-crisis information because the monthly dataset ends in July 2026. They cannot establish a delayed food-price effect from this disruption, including one operating through fertilizer supplies and subsequent harvests.

Other limitations narrow the conclusions further. Vessel counts and carrying capacity do not reveal exact cargo contents, while the freight proxy reflects broader dry bulk markets rather than Hormuz-specific charges. The transport scenarios rely on fixed assumptions, and their emissions estimates exclude upstream fuel production. A separate forecast based on historical food prices does not incorporate the crisis mechanism or independently validate its economic effects.

The next research priorities are consequently practical: extend the post-disruption record, connect shipping movements to customs and cargo data, and examine destination-level food prices and delivery bottlenecks. Fertilizer transmission needs dedicated evidence across planting and harvest cycles. Comparing strategic inventories with alternative transport investments would also help determine which combinations provide dependable access at an acceptable financial and environmental cost.

Hormuz's broader lesson is that continuity has several dimensions. Cargo may remain deliverable while becoming harder to finance, more carbon-intensive or less affordable for vulnerable consumers. The study connects the food-security objectives of SDG 2 with the resource and production concerns of SDG 12. Resilience planning becomes more credible when it accounts for those burdens alongside the ability to keep goods moving.