Well as other’s already mentioned China get’s roughly ~20% of their oil from this region. All of that oil has to go through the Strait of Hormuz.
The most interesting part about why this is bad for food security in any country is that our agriculture systems runs on oil (you could say we eat the oil). You need to run your farming equipment & all the processing that is needed to make the food edible.
Transporting food from the countryside to cities where most people live is also very “Oil”/Gasoline intensive. At the same time you need to cool/freeze the food (needs electricity which is mostly fossil fuels still).
So if your Oil supply runs dry your just fucked. Modern society will just not be able to function with it’s City focused infrastructure.
Oh and the most relevant part is that fertilizers use a lot of oil to be produced. Well it’s not directly involved but still relevant.
The Haber-Bosch ammonia production needs Natural Gas (by product from Oil extraction) to function or you can substitute it with
Petroleum Coke (Petcoke) which is a byproduct of oil refining.
Having less fertilizer is a HUGE problem for the next harvest season because your yields will be much lower which in turn reduces food availability.
So yea everything that you eat & is grown by a farm needs a fuck ton of oil.
you could even say that a globalised food supply chain is not the ideal arrangement and that localised food production should be every country’s priority with surplus going to market. National and global corporations don’t do this because the local markets are too small to deliver industrial scale profit, but the most efficient approach to food production is least amount of travel and processing as possible. It’s not for profit, it’s for efficient food supplies.
I guess they’re referring to China getting 11% of it’s crude from Iran and nearly 50% from Arab countries that use the hermouz straight. They also have a huge reserve that should last them 3-4 months (or 6-8 months assuming they only lose 50%).
Or… they’ll import more from Russia and reduce consumption to last much longer.
It’s a national emergency, but I don’t think they’re facing mass starvation because of it… Would love for them to expand on what they mean.
Well it’s a major shipping corridor isn’t it and mines tend to be sort of a detriment to that that’s kind of the whole point really.
Add on to the fact that China isn’t all that industrialised and tends to import a lot of its food and you’ve got a problem. The Chinese government are more competent than most (not really a shining endorsement of capitalism is it) so they might have pivoted to India but I don’t know how much time they would require.
The amazing thing about all of this is it probably isn’t going to increase the price of RAM, so that’s the first for 2026.
How so? I’m not challenging you, I honestly just don’t know what relationship you’re talking about.
Well as other’s already mentioned China get’s roughly ~20% of their oil from this region. All of that oil has to go through the Strait of Hormuz.
The most interesting part about why this is bad for food security in any country is that our agriculture systems runs on oil (you could say we eat the oil). You need to run your farming equipment & all the processing that is needed to make the food edible. Transporting food from the countryside to cities where most people live is also very “Oil”/Gasoline intensive. At the same time you need to cool/freeze the food (needs electricity which is mostly fossil fuels still). So if your Oil supply runs dry your just fucked. Modern society will just not be able to function with it’s City focused infrastructure.
Oh and the most relevant part is that fertilizers use a lot of oil to be produced. Well it’s not directly involved but still relevant. The Haber-Bosch ammonia production needs Natural Gas (by product from Oil extraction) to function or you can substitute it with Petroleum Coke (Petcoke) which is a byproduct of oil refining. Having less fertilizer is a HUGE problem for the next harvest season because your yields will be much lower which in turn reduces food availability.
So yea everything that you eat & is grown by a farm needs a fuck ton of oil.
you could even say that a globalised food supply chain is not the ideal arrangement and that localised food production should be every country’s priority with surplus going to market. National and global corporations don’t do this because the local markets are too small to deliver industrial scale profit, but the most efficient approach to food production is least amount of travel and processing as possible. It’s not for profit, it’s for efficient food supplies.
I guess they’re referring to China getting 11% of it’s crude from Iran and nearly 50% from Arab countries that use the hermouz straight. They also have a huge reserve that should last them 3-4 months (or 6-8 months assuming they only lose 50%).
Or… they’ll import more from Russia and reduce consumption to last much longer.
It’s a national emergency, but I don’t think they’re facing mass starvation because of it… Would love for them to expand on what they mean.
Edit: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/11/iran-ships-oil-china-strait-hormuz-closure-.html
“Iran has sent at least 11.7 million barrels of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began”
Well it’s a major shipping corridor isn’t it and mines tend to be sort of a detriment to that that’s kind of the whole point really.
Add on to the fact that China isn’t all that industrialised and tends to import a lot of its food and you’ve got a problem. The Chinese government are more competent than most (not really a shining endorsement of capitalism is it) so they might have pivoted to India but I don’t know how much time they would require.
The amazing thing about all of this is it probably isn’t going to increase the price of RAM, so that’s the first for 2026.