Why this matters: Two countries at war supply much of the world's grain and fertilizer — disruptions can reach grocery bills far away.
Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of grains, oilseeds, fertilizer and the gas that fertilizer is made from. This explains the grain-export, fertilizer and energy-input channels, anchored on FAO and World Bank price history.
- Grain and oilseed exports
- Fertilizer supply
- Energy inputs to fertilizer
- Shipping and insurance
How this can reach everyday life
- Black Sea export disruption
- Grain & fertilizer trade
- World food prices
- Partial retail pass-through
- Grocery bill pressure
A qualitative pathway, not a prediction — each step can transmit, partly and with lags. See how war reaches everyday life.
Try this as an interactive scenario
Explore how this could play out by adjusting duration, severity and how much rerouting or spare capacity could cushion it — in the Global Shock Simulator. It is an assumption-based scenario, not a forecast, and asserts no current number.
Open this scenario →The data, at a glance
Source-reported committed series (FAO indices / World Bank prices). Dashed lines mark dated reference events — prices move for many reasons and this is not a claim any single event was the sole cause. Full data on the commodity history page.
What this is about
Ukraine and Russia together account for a large share of world wheat, maize and sunflower-oil exports, and Russia is a major fertilizer exporter. Fertilizer production also depends heavily on natural gas. The FAO Food Price Index and World Bank Pink Sheet — both carried on Warconomy's commodity history page — record how food and fertilizer prices moved over this period. This briefing explains the channels; the actual values live on the source-linked data pages, and movements around event periods are shown as associative context, not as proof of cause.
Economic channels
The routes through which this can transmit to prices and trade. Several usually operate at once, which is why a single cause can rarely be isolated.
Grain and oilseed exports
Disruption to Black Sea exports of wheat, maize and sunflower oil tightens global availability, which can be reflected in benchmark food prices.
Fertilizer supply
Russia is a leading exporter of nitrogen, phosphate and potash fertilizers. Constraints on fertilizer trade can raise input costs for farmers worldwide.
Energy inputs to fertilizer
Nitrogen fertilizer is made using natural gas. Higher gas prices raise fertilizer production costs — an energy-to-food transmission channel.
Shipping and insurance
Higher freight and war-risk insurance on affected routes add to delivered food costs, compounding supply effects.
What Warconomy data shows
Warconomy's commodity history page carries the FAO Food Price Index and Cereal Price Index (FAO official CSV) plus World Bank wheat, maize, urea and DAP fertilizer price levels. Event markers from the existing dataset are shown as 'prices moved around this period' references — explicitly not causal attributions.
Related source-linked series (on the data pages, not scraped here):
What this does not prove
- It does not prove the war was the sole cause of any food- or fertilizer-price move; weather, energy, policy and demand all contribute.
- The figures are source-reported index and price levels, shown for context, not a measured war impact.
- Warconomy does not forecast prices or claim real-time market data.
Sources
Every figure this briefing refers to lives on a source-linked Warconomy page. The registry entries behind it:
- FAO — Food Price Index (monthly) — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (official)
- World Bank — World Bank Group (official)
Where to go next
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Cite this page
Warconomy, “Russia–Ukraine war: food and fertilizer prices”, reviewed as of June 23, 2026. https://warconomy.com/briefings/russia-ukraine-food-fertilizer-prices.
Machine-readable: the JSON dataset and source registry. More citation formats on the citation catalog. Values are source-linked and manually maintained; not real-time.