By Shobha Shetty BRUSSELS, April 29, 2026 — The shocks keep coming. The question is whether we help smallholder farmers face them together — or leave them to face them alone. Right now, that question is urgent. Renewed conflict across the Middle East has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly a third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer passes. Urea prices have jumped sharply. Ammonia is at a three-year high. And somewhere in Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, or Benin, a smallholder farmer is doing the math on whether she can afford to plant this season. For wealthy, large-scale producers, these shocks are painful. For smallholder farmers in low-income countries, they can be catastrophic. Unlike commercial producers, smallholders typically buy inputs at retail prices and operate on margins so thin that even a modest price rise can wipe out an entire season’s income. This is not a new story When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, disruption to Black ...