Tanya Dando

and a little bit longer to come through in ambient processed foods, which would be about a year from the start of the Iran war, if it followed the same pattern as Ukraine, which we'd expect it to do.

So by about March 2027, we should see the peak of food inflation.

This is the key shift that has taken place in the Gulf over the last decade or so, in that the Gulf is not simply a producer of crude oil or natural gas.

It's become much more diversified industrially.

thing that we can see is that it's become a major center of these chemical productions.

So for example, the global ammonia trade, about a fifth of global ammonia comes from the Gulf region, about a third of urea comes from the Gulf state.

So this is why the current war really has the potential to really have very deep ramifications all across food supply chains.

Yes, I was, for instance, recently in Thailand speaking about this issue and in the audience was a

a rice exporter, a person who worked for a rice exporting company.

And he made the point that Thailand is a critical part of the supply of rice across Southeast Asia.

And he said, we're facing the energy shock.

We're also facing

facing the fertilizer shock.

And then he said the other factor, which isn't well understood, is we're facing a problem with the actual bags that are used to store and move the rice because those bags are made from plastics and those plastics tend also to come from the Gulf region.

This is part, again, of this vertical integration.

So there's a manifold and multiple ways in which this crisis can kind of appear in unseen ways through the food system.

Absolutely.

The UAE and in particular Dubai and the Jebel Ali port in Dubai is a major transshipment hub for food and other kinds of commodities.

And again, this is part of the vertical integration that we can see.

in the Gulf states alongside with their growing role in global trade and the movement of food and other commodities is their power in global logistics ports and shipping routes.