Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide October 1965

MAY 3 — The US-Iran war is not just spiking gas prices; it is systematically disrupting the global food system. The concern about global food security is a clear-eyed assessment of a supply chain built on a fossil fuel foundation. Modern agriculture is, for better or worse, the art of turning oil and gas into food. And the Persian Gulf is the epicentre of that transformation. Roughly one-third of the world’s seaborne fertiliser trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. 

The Gulf states are also critical suppliers of nitrogen fertilisers, which require natural gas as a feedstock, and phosphates, which require sulphur—from region’s petrochemical industry. With the strait closed, this critical artery has been severed. The timing could not be more catastrophic. Across the Northern Hemisphere—from America’s breadbasket to Europe’s farms—March is the month farmers buy fertiliser for spring application. The supply isn’t just delayed but simply not coming. US farmers are facing a 25 per cent shortfall in usual supplies.

Fertiliser accounts for up to 25 per cent of a farmer’s production costs. When prices surge—as they have, —farmers face a brutal choice: pay crippling prices, ration application and accept lower yields, or switch to less input-intensive crops. Any of these paths lead to a smaller harvest. According to the World Bank: when fertiliser prices spike, they stay “higher for longer,” and downstream food inflation inevitably follows. This is the “hidden front” of the war, as the Council on Foreign Relations terms it—a slow-motion crisis where the effects of today’s shortages won’t be fully visible until the harvest is brought in months from now. We are, in effect, sowing the seeds of next year’s food inflation today.

But the threat doesn’t end at the farm gate. Higher energy prices translate directly into higher costs for fuelling tractors, running irrigation, and powering food processing plants. Logistics face soaring freight rates and insurance premiums. Even before food reaches a ship or a truck, the cost of packaging—from plastic wraps to storage containers, all derived from petrochemicals—is spiking. Chemical giant BASF has already announced price increases of up to 20 per cent for core plastic additives.

This creates a pincer movement on consumers. First-round effects hit packaging and transport, raising the cost of getting food to the supermarket. Second-round effects, driven by the fertiliser shock, will gradually increase the cost of the food itself—grains, cooking oil, protein—as higher input costs work their way through the system. As MBSB Research notes, margin risk is highest for companies with little pricing power, but the ultimate “loser” in this equation is always the consumer, facing a “broader cost reset”.

The pain will not be distributed equally. The World Food Programme (WFP) has already activated emergency response systems, warning that disruptions are imperilling millions in the Middle East, a region already grappling with fragile economies and conflict. But the crisis will reach far beyond the immediate war zone. Countries like Egypt, historically the world’s largest wheat importer, are acutely vulnerable to any shock in global grain markets. The war is a reminder that for countries heavily reliant on food imports—like the Gulf states themselves, which import over 90 per cent of their rice, corn, and soybeans—food security is not a given; it’s a fragile construct dependent on peaceful seas. We may not be spared either from the turmoil as we import much of our food.

There is a bitter historical irony here. The skyrocketing bread prices and food insecurity exacerbated by global wheat shortages in 2010-2011 were contributing factors to the Arab Spring. Today, we risk a repeat performance on a wider stage, driven not by a confluence of weather events, but by a man-made conflict at a vital chokepoint. As critics rightly point out, this crisis exposes a “systemic failure at the heart of our global food system”. 

Our reliance on a handful of volatile nations for critical inputs like fertiliser, and the “just-in-time” logic that leaves us with no strategic reserves, has created an edifice of extreme fragility. Unlike oil, there is no strategic petroleum reserve for fertiliser. When the supply chain breaks, the system doesn’t just creak; it seizes.

The war in Iran is a stark illustration of how twenty-first-century conflict can weaponise not just bombs and bullets, but food, water, and the very inputs that sustain modern life. The concern over global food security is not an overreaction. It is a recognition that the price of this war will be paid in full long after the last shot is fired, by farmers unable to plant, by families facing empty shelves, and by nations pushed to the brink by a hunger that was entirely man-made.  

* Professor Datuk Ahmad Ibrahim is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. He can be reached at ahmadibrahim@ucsiuniversity.edu.my 

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.

Jeff Carlson Kansas...ish posted a photo:

Looking every bit like a scene along US 10 in western Minnesota, or US 52 in eastern North Dakoka, I went out this morning to photograph the Southwest Chief as it rolled into Topeka.

This scene in reality is along US 75 in Pauline, KS on Topeka's south side, and the two beautiful Northern Pacific dome cars are owned and operated by Webb Rail. The 313 and 549 were both built by Budd in 1954 for the North Coast Limited, and served stints on the BN and Amtrak before being sold into private hands.

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The Trump Administration has terminated the positions of every member of an independent board meant to govern the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The National Science Board directs and approves large funding decisions for NSF’s approximately $9 billion basic science research budget. It is meant to function independently from the federal administration to keep science funding insulated from political pressure and budget cycles.

In a 24 April notice from the Presidential Personnel Office, all the scientists serving on the board were informed their positions had been eliminated. The emails dismissing board members provided no reason for the termination.

“I am deeply disappointed, though I cannot say I am entirely surprised,” Willie E. May, one of the terminated board members and vice president of research and economic development at Morgan State University in Maryland, told The New York Times. 

“I have watched the systematic dismantling of the scientific advisory infrastructure of this government with growing alarm, and the National Science Board is simply the latest casualty,” he said. 

Ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) called the terminations “the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation.”  

The terminations come after a year that shocked higher education and research budgets. Last year, NSF granted 51% less funding to scientists than the 2015-2024 average and terminated hundreds of active grants. Last May, the Trump administration proposed cutting $5 billion from NSF’s budget, though the proposal was rejected. The president’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 once again proposes to reduce the foundation’s budget by more than half. In a February 2026 meeting of the National Science Board, NSF leadership said the foundation was seeking to reduce grant solicitations.

The Trump administration has also restructured scientific advisory groups elsewhere in the federal government, eliminating 152 federal advisory committees at science agencies, merging all of the Department of Energy’s advisory committees into one and dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency’s research office.

“Without a functional National Science Board in the near term, the agency is left without the guidance and oversight of independent experts, and the public is left without information on how NSF is carrying out its mission,” Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a blog post about the terminations. 

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

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The 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera turned its 4-meter telescope toward Messier 104, better known as the Sombrero Galaxy, and captured an exceptional side-on view of the galaxy, sometimes called "the Universe's dusty brimmed hat."

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