Price of stability: Strengthening every layer of food security

Over the past weeks, I contended three things: 

First, that stability starts with food.  

Second, that food systems should be treated as strategic infrastructure. 

And third, we introduced a “food as infrastructure” pyramid showing the layers that underpin food system stability. 

This week provides a real-world illustration of a layer of that pyramid: Logistical and trade resilience. It also highlights why the concept of strategic food autonomy is often misunderstood.  

Food system resilience does not mean every country produces all its own food. That is neither practical nor economically desirable. History shows that stockpiles, export bans and import blockages fail when they ignore how food systems actually function. 

One thing that matters is whether the food system's infrastructure holds under stress.  The current tensions around the Strait of Hormuz show why. 

Shipping risks affect logistics, insurance, and trade flows, not farms directly.   One corridor highlights the fragility of global food flows. This maritime chokepoint carries a significant share of global energy and commodity flows, as this recent MarineTraffic post clearly shows. 

When shipping risks increase, the immediate pressure does not appear on farms. It appears higher up the system, in logistics, insurance, shipping routes and trade flows. Exactly the layer highlighted in the pyramid: Logistical and trade resilience.  But resilience is not built at the top. It is built from the bottom up. Soils, water, nutrient cycles, affordable and reliable food access, and viable livelihoods. When risks emerge higher in the system, they cascade downward through these layers.  

The first layers of the pyramid sit below trade and logistics: The natural systems that enable production, reliable access to food, and viable livelihoods for farmers and workers. 

Healthy soils, water systems and nutrient cycles are the foundation. 

Affordable and reliable food access underpins social stability. 

Resilient farmer and worker livelihoods determine whether production can continue through climate, price and geopolitical shocks. 

When risks emerge higher in the system, whether shipping disruptions, fertiliser supply shocks or energy volatility, they cascade downward through these layers. 

Around one third of globally traded fertilisers pass through Hormuz. These are not marginal inputs. When fertiliser, energy and shipping risks stack across multiple layers of the pyramid, a maritime disruption quickly becomes a food price shock. Especially in a system where ~30% of global energy use sits after the farm gate. 

Efficiency optimised value chains work, until stress propagates downward through the pyramid.  This is not an argument against trade. It is an argument against narrowly optimised trade and food systems. 

A resilient food system applies: 

• Diversification alongside specialisation 
• Long-term relationships alongside spot markets 
• Hedged supply alongside the lowest cost sourcing 
• Shared risk across layers, not risk pushed downward 
• Resilience treated as a design objective, not an externality 

The key insight is simple: Food system resilience cannot be secured at the border.

 It starts with strengthening the foundations: Natural systems, food access and viable livelihoods, and extending upward through resilient market systems, infrastructure and trade. 

And it cannot be built by one country alone. 

Even in periods of geopolitical tension, food security ultimately depends on deep and reliable trade relationships. Systems in which producing countries benefit more from production and investment, and importing countries benefit from stable, predictable supply.