Sanctions, Geopolitics, and the New Risks Shaping Global Food Supply Chains

Global food supply chains were designed for efficiency. Crops are grown where conditions are most favourable, processed where infrastructure is strongest and shipped across continents through trading networks that have evolved over decades.

For much of the past thirty years that system operated on a relatively simple assumption: that global trade routes would remain open, predictable and largely insulated from geopolitical conflict.

That assumption is now being tested.

Conflicts, sanctions regimes and shifting geopolitical alliances are increasingly shaping how commodities move through global markets and, in some cases, whether they can move at all. Strategic shipping corridors have become potential flashpoints, while governments are expanding regulatory frameworks governing trade, labour standards and sanctions compliance.

Anthony Rapa, International Trade Partner at Blank Rome, says the consequences of these developments are already visible across global food supply chains.

“There’s certainly an impact in different ways. Number one is just physically what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz and the impact on energy markets,” he explains. “Everything downstream of the price of oil can impact the food industry in a variety of ways.”

Energy markets are only part of the picture. Increasingly, geopolitical tensions are also translating into legal restrictions that determine where companies can source ingredients and how those ingredients can move across borders.

“There are legal measures that could come through as the result of geopolitical tensions – sanctions, tariffs or certain kinds of duties that are assessed. There could be supply chain prohibitions based upon labour practices,” Rapa notes.

Geopolitical developments are increasingly shaping the legal and regulatory frameworks that govern how global food supply chains operate.

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"Sanctions, Geopolitics, and the New Risks Shaping Global Food Supply Chains," by Ben Cornwell was published in New Food's 2026 Global Food Supply Chains report.