Trevor Whittington, CEO WAFarmers

At a time when Australian farmers are facing a major fertiliser squeeze, Canberra has decided the priority is not supply, not affordability, and not domestic resilience—but underwriting a green ammonia export dream ... while farmers are being told to accept decile 10 nitrogen prices, or even decile zero availability, taxpayers—including those same farmers in the years they make money—are being lined up to help fast track a plant that will help foreign farmers access fertiliser.

Some of you may have read my previous articles on Summit’s Force Majeure Gamble: A Pattern Emerges and CSBP’s Force Majeure Gamble ... The response on social media has been staggering, with the algorithms going off the charts — which tells me I have hit a nerve. Even more interesting are the stories of urea...

Australia has just signed up to a free trade agreement with the European Union, which is being sold—predictably—as a great leap forward for the inner city consumer ... Out in the paddock, however, the mood is less celebratory. Because the small print tells a more familiar story. Australian once again, signed a deal where farmers pay the costs.

As the Iran–USA–Israel conflict ripples through global fertiliser markets, Western Australian farmers are discovering just how fragile their supply chains really are. At the centre of it is CSBP, which has reached for the force majeure clause in its contracts to step away from its contractual obligations.

Urea hit the equivalent of $2,800 a tonne in today’s dollars back in 1974. That’s not a typo—and it’s not ancient history either. To understand how that happens, you need to start with geography. Roughly a third of global fertiliser trade by sea—not production, trade—passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet drive through Perth and the metropolitan fuel system appears to be operating normally. No ration notices. No capped pumps. No anxious motorists sneaking jerry-cans into the back of Hiluxes ... something more curious is emerging: selective rationing.

There was also something about prioritising regional areas. What there was not was anything resembling a system to track where fuel shortages are actually occurring, or to require distributors to send fuel where it is most needed.

When governments start calling emergency roundtables it usually means one thing: The planning should have happened years ago. Last week the Western Australian Government convened a “Fuel Security Roundtable” in response to supply disruptions linked to rising tensions in the Middle East.

This article is a rerun of a piece I first published in these pages back in November 2023 ... Readers may recall the strategic fuel debate that ran hot a few years ago when the BP refinery in Perth was about to close and Australia suddenly realised it only had a couple of weeks of fuel reserves.

I’m continually amazed how many people can fly to Bali yet couldn’t point to it on a map. Ask them to name the countries that sit north of Indonesia and you’ll usually get a blank look. Yet geography still matters. In fact, it quietly dictates how the global economy works.