A Guest Article by Pedro Nonay
This was originally published in Spanish in El Español, and the author has translated it into English with the aid of AI.
“When we had all the answers, they changed the questions.” — Mario Benedetti
For decades, we built models, theories, and certainties about how global commodity trade worked: efficiency, specialisation, supply chain integration. Today, those answers no longer fit the questions posed by the new geopolitical chessboard. This article proposes a sequential journey through these new paradigms and their cascading effects on agricultural markets. We are witnessing the birth of the “Geo-commodity“ world.
- The new order: from military power to commercial-technological power
Global leadership has shifted its centre of gravity. It is no longer measured solely by military capability, but by commercial, technological, and financial power. In this transition, the United States and China mark the point where an established power meets an emerging one — the scenario Graham Allison termed “the Thucydides Trap”: the historically most dangerous inflexion point, when a rising power challenges the dominant one.
The result is a fragmented, asymmetric world, where blocs, alliances, and spheres of influence replace the linear globalisation of the past three decades. Yet even amid fragmentation, one element governs all relationships: interdependence. No one can fully disconnect from anyone else. Competition and mutual need coexist.
- The “BI” moment
We live in what could be called a “BI” moment: bipolar, biglobal, bilateral, binary. In the commodities arena, that prefix also signals the rise of bio-energy, a symptom of a broader phenomenon: the “-ISM effect” — protectionism, nationalism, sovereigntism. All sectors, including food, are fortifying their defences in the name of national sovereignty.
This marks a significant conceptual shift: today, food matters more for reasons of national security — the paradigm of the 1970s and 80s — than for the sustainability discourse that dominated the last decade. Food is once again seen as a strategic weapon, not merely a resource to be optimised.
- Cascading effects on commodities
3.1 Supply security over cost efficiency. The strategic priority is no longer to produce at the lowest possible cost, but to ensure that supply arrives. For now, sovereignty is achieved more by stockpiling what others produce efficiently. Feeding the world becomes an instrument of geopolitical control. One figure illustrates the point: 36 countries depend on imports for more than 50% of their bread wheat — the basis of bread and pita, an essential staple — and Russia (with Ukraine playing a marginal role) is the leading supplier of that raw material. Whoever controls that grain controls part of those countries’ social stability.
3.2 From just-in-time to just-in-case. Logistics logic has shifted paradigmatically to avoid falling into “just-too-late.” Bottlenecks become the true catalysts of price volatility: the Bosphorus Strait is to agriculture what the Strait of Hormuz is to energy. A blockage, real or perceived, triggers volatility.
3.3 Bio-energy, or biofuels, is the intersection where commodity families such as energy, agriculture, and metals converge. It is the meeting point of food and energy, governed by “national security.” It becomes the wildcard in the new commodities paradigm.
3.4 Asymmetry in production costs. Global agriculture today faces a deeply unequal cost structure, driven by energy and fertiliser prices. Whoever has cheap access to both gains a structural competitive advantage; whoever does not remains exposed to international price cycles.
- Economics: growth, supply, and demand
Geopolitical uncertainty reduces global growth and, with it, commodity demand — which is further pressured by persistent inflation. Harvests, meanwhile, continue to outpace demand, already weakened by a demographic slowdown. Structurally, this does not point to an upward price trend. But logistics and geopolitics can generate localized supply squeezes that move the market, even when underlying fundamentals don’t justify it.
- Freight: the hidden cost of fragmentation
Maritime shipping faithfully reflects this new reality: route changes, rising fuel prices, higher insurance premiums, and general inefficiency, all of which translate into more expensive freight. Add to this the growing risk of the “dark fleet” — fleets operating outside standard regulatory frameworks — a direct consequence of a fragmenting world and the sanctions regime. Freight is no longer a simple logistics cost; it has become a geopolitical thermometer.
- Finance: the dollar under pressure, but still on its throne
On the financial front, sanctions, BRICS, crypto-assets, stablecoins, interest rates, and alternatives to SWIFT are shaping a system that is evolving faster, becoming less costly, and gradually eroding the dollar’s role as a payment instrument. However, the dollar retains its dominance as a reserve instrument. The transition is not a sudden replacement but a gradual erosion of functions — not of status.
Conclusion: the anatomy of the interconnected market
To understand this new map, it helps to think of the global market as a human body. Energy is the circulatory system: it irrigates all economic activity. Agriculture is the digestive system: it transforms inputs into sustenance. Finance is the brain: it processes information and makes decisions. Geopolitics is the nervous system: it transmits warning signals and coordinates responses. And climate is the skin: the first frontier of contact with the outside world, the most exposed and the most visible.
A problem in any of these systems is, sooner or later, reflected in the others. An energy shock affects fertiliser costs; geopolitical tension alters freight; a financial decision changes appetite for agricultural risk. One cannot understand the anatomy of a single part without understanding the anatomy of the whole.
Thus, a “geo-commodity” is a raw material for which geopolitical risk ceases to be an external variable in pricing and becomes a constitutive part of its value.
When the questions change, as Benedetti said, the first task is not to rush towards new answers but to understand the entire organism that generates them. That is, today, the true exercise for those of us who analyse commodity markets.