For small-scale farmers across Africa, 2026 has been a punishing year. The war between Iran and Israel closed off the Strait of Hormuz in the spring, choking international shipping and abruptly halting the flow of goods that the world's food producers depend on — among them, fertilizer. With global prices surging almost overnight, growers who had long relied on imported soil amendments found themselves squeezed, caught between rising costs and the stubborn need to keep their crops alive. In Zambia, however, one farmer says she barely noticed the difference.
Kanangwa Newlove has spent years tending 12 acres on the outskirts of Lusaka, and by her own description the property has become a kind of paradise. Shady fruit trees are scattered across her fields. During the growing season, long tomato vines cascade over trellises. Neat rows of corn and pumpkins grow alongside blackjack, a leafy green popular in the region, and Newlove cultivates an impressive eleven varieties of lettuce. What makes her operation notable is not its scale, but the philosophy behind it: she grows organically, and she makes her own fertilizer.
Newlove's method is a traditional Asian technique known as bokashi, a fermented compost that farmers prepare themselves from organic material. Because the recipe relies on ingredients that can be gathered or bought cheaply, bokashi insulates her from the volatility of the global fertilizer market. When the Iran war sent conventional fertilizer prices spiking, Newlove's fields kept producing. "I started taking vegetables to my workmates, and before I knew it I was supplying the supermarket," she says. What began as a casual sideline grew into a business, Loctaguna Organics, which now supplies restaurants and airlines and runs training courses for NGOs and students interested in organic farming.
The timing of the crisis could hardly have been worse for Africa's smallholder farmers. The Iran conflict, which began earlier in 2026, disrupted the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a significant share of global trade — including shipments of fertilizer — must pass. International trade ground to a halt in key corridors, and the effects rippled outward quickly. Africa, where many farmers purchase fertilizer in small quantities and have little ability to stockpile or absorb price shocks, was especially exposed. Agronomists have long warned that the continent's dependence on imported inputs leaves entire harvests hostage to events thousands of miles away — and in 2026, that vulnerability became real.
Fertilizer is one of the single largest operating costs for many small farms, and when it becomes unaffordable, the consequences compound. Farmers plant less, apply fewer nutrients, and harvest thinner yields. Food prices rise in markets, and household budgets stretch thinner still. For growers operating on razor-thin margins, a spike in input costs can mean the difference between turning a profit and falling into debt. Development organizations have repeatedly pointed out that Sub-Saharan Africa applies far less fertilizer per hectare than the global average, a gap that already constrains productivity before any external shock arrives.
Against that backdrop, bokashi offers a modest but meaningful form of insurance. The technique, which has roots in Japanese agriculture, involves layering organic waste with a microbial inoculant and allowing it to ferment anaerobically. The finished product can be worked into soil to improve its structure and feed plants. Because it is produced on the farm, it sidesteps the shipping networks, import duties, and currency fluctuations that make commercial fertilizer so expensive and so unpredictable. Advocates say it also rebuilds soil health over time, rather than merely feeding the crop in front of you.
The economics are appealing. At Lusaka's Sugarbush Green Market, where Loctaguna Organics sets up a stall from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., bags of homemade bokashi sell for about 50 kwacha — roughly $2.50. For a smallholder, that is a fraction of what a comparable bag of conventional fertilizer might cost, particularly in a year when import prices have ballooned. On market days, the fertilizer shares table space with the organic vegetables it helped grow, a quiet demonstration of the system's self-sufficiency.
Still, bokashi is not a silver bullet. It requires steady access to organic raw materials, time to ferment, and knowledge of the process — labor and expertise that cash-strapped, time-poor farmers may struggle to spare. Newlove herself describes the work as a "labor of love," a phrase that acknowledges the effort involved even as she celebrates the results. Scaling the practice would require training, demonstration, and local supply chains for the microbial starters that make fermentation work.
That is part of why Newlove's training courses matter. By hosting NGOs and students on her farm, she is attempting to spread the technique beyond her own fence line — a grassroots answer to a problem that governments and international bodies have struggled to solve. Whether enough farmers will adopt it quickly enough to cushion the next price shock remains an open question.
For now, though, the vision Newlove has cultivated outside Lusaka stands as a quiet rebuke to a global system that leaves its smallest participants most exposed. As the world's trade routes slowly reopen and fertilizer prices settle, the farmers who made their own will have lost little. Those who depended entirely on imports will spend the coming season counting the cost of a war they had no part in — and wondering what the next disruption will bring.
(0)