Aid cuts and a fertiliser shock: the food risk…

Two events strike at the same time the countries most dependent on aid and food imports: the dismantling of the US aid agency in 2025, and the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz in 2026. Neither, taken in isolation, is new. Their superposition, on the same countries, is. This article sticks to documented figures and sets aside the death-toll estimates that no one can establish today.

US aid, dismantled

For two decades, the United States was the world’s largest bilateral donor. In July 2025, USAID was dissolved and, according to the figure quoted by secretary of state Marco Rubio himself, about 83% of its programmes were cut.

On the consequences, several teams have published convergent projections. The Lancet (Cavalcanti et al., 2025) estimates that USAID-funded programmes were associated with about 91 million deaths averted between 2001 and 2021, and projects, if the cuts continue, more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030 (uncertainty interval: 8.5 to 19.7 million), including 4.5 million children under five. A separate study published in Lancet Global Health (February 2026), which incorporates the cuts of other donors (United Kingdom, Germany, Canada), widens the range to 9.4 million deaths in a moderate scenario and 22.6 million in a halving scenario. The Center for Global Development, for its part, estimates between 500,000 and 1 million lives lost in 2025 alone as a result of the US cuts.

These numbers are modelled projections, with uncertainties their authors underline. Their value is not the decimal, but their convergence: different methods and data reach the same order of magnitude.

Modelled projections, with uncertainty intervals. They do not measure an observed toll.

Hunger, already at a record level

The context on which these cuts apply is already tight. According to the Global Report on Food Crises 2026, published on 24 April 2026, 266 million people in 47 countries were in acute food insecurity (IPC phase 3 or above) in 2025. The WFP Global Outlook counts a total of about 318 million people in acute hunger, of whom 41 million in phase 4 (emergency) and about 1.4 million in phase 5 (catastrophe). For the first time since monitoring began, two famines were confirmed in the same year, in the Gaza Strip and in areas of Sudan; the famine risk is maintained for Gaza, Sudan and South Sudan in 2026. On nutrition, 35.5 million children were in acute malnutrition, nearly 10 million of them in severe form.

Two famines confirmed in 2025 (Gaza, Sudan); risk maintained in 2026 for Gaza, Sudan and South Sudan.

The fertiliser channel

This is where the second shock comes into play. The Gulf is a major exporter of nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonia), whose seaborne transport passes, like part of the hydrocarbons, through the Strait of Hormuz. A disruption there raises the cost of both energy and agricultural inputs. The link between fertiliser prices and food insecurity is documented: the 2022 shock, following the invasion of Ukraine, fed the surge in acute hunger in the following years. The SOFI 2025 report (FAO and UN agencies) recalls that, since 2020, food inflation has outpaced general inflation and hits low-income countries hardest, where it peaked around 30% in May 2023. A new shock to fertilisers and energy therefore transmits first to the poorest importers, those whose yields depend on inputs bought in foreign currency.

Why the superposition matters

The point is not any single event. It is that the aid cut removes a shock absorber at the precise moment a supply shock raises prices, and that the two hit largely the same countries: Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia are among the largest crises recorded by the GRFC, and were also among the recipients of US aid.

No precise quantified toll of this superposition can be established today, and any estimate of a number of “additional” deaths attributable to a month of blockade would be conjecture. What is documented is the amplification of a risk, flagged by the WFP, the FAO and the Lancet authors alike. One aggravating element, often overlooked, deserves noting: funding cuts also reduce data collection. The GRFC 2026 notes the lowest data availability in ten years, which complicates precisely the targeting of aid where it is most lacking.

Primary sources: Lancet, Cavalcanti et al. (2025) and Lancet Global Health (February 2026); Center for Global Development; WFP Global Outlook and Global Report on Food Crises 2026 (FSIN / GNAFC, 24 April 2026); SOFI 2025 (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO); public statements by the US State Department on the scope of the USAID cuts.