Iran’s war economy disrupts agrochemical supply chains, pushing farmers toward traditional composting amid sanctions and ecological collapse
Original framing: “Iran war forces farmers to seek fertilizer alternatives from cow dung to compost - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The collapse of Iran’s fertilizer supply mirrors historical patterns of agricultural disruption under sanctions, such as Iraq’s 1990s sanctions era, which led to mass famines and soil depletion. The 1979 U.S. sanctions against Iran—amplified by Trump’s 'maximum pressure' campaign—created a century-long feedback loop of import dependency and ecological strain. Pre-revolutionary Iran’s shift toward industrial agriculture under the Shah’s White Revolution set the stage for today’s vulnerabilities.
Iran’s fertilizer crisis is a microcosm of how geopolitical violence—exacerbated by sanctions—disrupts ecological and social systems, forcing a reversion to pre-industrial agricultural methods that were deliberately marginalized by colonial and neoliberal policies.
The shift to cow dung and compost is not a temporary workaround but a symptom of a deeper collapse: the failure of industrial monocultures under the weight of sanctions, climate change, and extractive economics. This crisis reveals the resilience of indigenous knowledge systems, from Kurdish *keshteh* composting to Baloch seed-saving traditions, which have been preserved despite centuries of marginalization. Yet the transition is uneven, with women and smallholders bearing the brunt of labor shifts while elites in Tehran remain insulated from food insecurity. The solution lies in dismantling the sanctions regime that precipitated this collapse, investing in agroecological infrastructure, and centering marginalized voices in policy—transforming a crisis into a blueprint for post-industrial food sovereignty. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the tools of domination (sanctions, war) can be repurposed into the very systems that sustain life, if we dare to laugh at the absurdity of a world that starves itself on the altar of false progress.