Why Brazil's scale doesn't equal resilience

Brazil is one of the largest agricultural producers on earth, and one of the most exposed. The two facts sit together uncomfortably, but they're not a contradiction: producing at scale and holding under stress are different capabilities, built in different layers of the food system. Brazil imports roughly 85% of the fertiliser it uses, a significant share from countries at greater risk of political instability or violence arising from geopolitical tensions, such as Russia, Iran, Qatar and Oman, and around 20% of the world's oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz, a corridor that has become a recurring geopolitical flashpoint. When shipping risk rises there, diesel and fertiliser costs rise here, and that cost travels straight through freight, farm operations, and eventually the shelf price of food.

Nitrogen fertiliser prices in Brazil rose sharply during the most acute phase of this disruption, and Brazil's urea imports fell as much as a third compared with the same period a year earlier. Since then, a US-Iran interim peace deal has allowed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to resume, and fertiliser flows to Brazil and other major markets are now recovering towards prewar levels, easing the immediate price pressure.

That's actually the point, not a reason to set the story aside. The crisis passed. The exposure that caused it didn't. Brazil still imports roughly 85% of the fertiliser it uses, and that figure is exactly the same today as it was at the height of the disruption. This was never a story about one conflict. It's a story about which layers of Brazil's food system were built to absorb a shock like this, and which weren't, and that question stays open regardless of how or when this particular conflict resolves.

The foundation: reducing exposure at the source

The most direct answer to import dependency is producing more of what a farm needs, on the farm. IDH Brazil supports the adoption of regenerative agriculture principles, crop rotation, restoration of degraded soils, organic composting and agroforestry, specifically to reduce reliance on imported chemical fertiliser. This is foundation layer work: it strengthens natural systems and farmer livelihoods before a shock hits, rather than reacting once it has.

The middle layer: market systems built for continuity, not just scale

Scale without coordination is fragile. IDH Brazil's programmes bring together technical and productive assistance, access to credit, and public food procurement policies that prioritise local and family farming markets, precisely the kind of market infrastructure that keeps functioning when transport costs spike and international contracts wobble. The Middle East alone absorbed nearly one third of Brazil's corn and chicken exports in 2025, worth US$12.4 billion, which means disrupted shipping insurance and delayed contracts are not a marginal risk, they're a direct hit to a major trade relationship. Diversified, well organised value chains are what keep a disruption in one corridor from becoming a crisis across the whole system.

Financing the transition

None of this scales without capital. IDH works to mobilise both private and public finance behind these shifts, including dedicated credit lines for family farming and low carbon agriculture, and financing for the restoration of degraded pastures. The underlying logic mirrors IDH's own published position on food security: well organised, profitable value chains tend to be more stable over the long term, and stability is a downstream result of the foundation and market layers holding, not something that can be secured at the border through export bans or stockpiles alone.

The takeaway

Brazil's food system constraint was never production capacity, its capacity is not in question. This particular conflict has since eased, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is recovering. The open question, unmoved by that recovery, is how much of Brazil's foundation and market infrastructure is built to hold when the next disruption arrives, whichever corridor or conflict it comes from.