2027 Food Crisis Warning: Start Your Florida Garden Now

A Wall Street bank just told its clients that the world could be short on food by 2027. I am telling you something simpler. The best time to have a garden was five years ago. The second best time is this weekend, and in Florida the calendar happens to agree with me.

On August 17, 2026, a JPMorgan research note started making the rounds. The headline version says fertilizer shortages could trigger a global food crisis in 2027. That version is close, but it is not the whole story, and the whole story is more useful to you than the headline is.

I am not here to scare anybody. Fear does not grow food. Seeds do. But I am also not going to sit here and pretend I did not read it. So let us go through what the bank actually said, what is already true at the grocery store, and exactly what a Florida grower can put in the ground between now and October.

What JPMorgan actually said

The report is called Food Security Is National Security: A Compounding Storm. The lead name on it is Nora Szentivanyi, a London based senior global economist at the bank. It was picked up by financial press on August 17, 2026. Worth noting for honesty: Benzinga reported that JPMorgan did not respond to its request for comment, so what the public has is the reporting on the note, not the note itself posted on a website.

Here is the part that matters. The bank is not describing one bad harvest. It is describing several pressures compounding on top of each other:

• The forecast. Global food inflation rising from roughly 2.8 percent in the first half of 2026 to roughly 5 percent in the first half of 2027. That is close to double.
• The five drivers. War, weather, warehousing, water, and waste.
• Fertilizer. Tension around the Strait of Hormuz puts a real share of the world's nitrogen fertilizer trade at risk. Qatar alone accounted for about 9.3 percent of global urea exports in 2025, and Iran about 8.4 percent. Put those together and roughly one out of every six tons of urea traded on earth moves through that neighborhood.
• Weather. NOAA has put the odds of a historically strong El Nino event during October through December 2026 at 69 percent. JPMorgan's analysts note that agricultural effects lag the ocean peak by six to twelve months, which is exactly how you get a 2026 ocean event showing up as a 2027 grocery problem.
• The buffer is thin. US wheat ending stocks were reported at 717 million bushels, down about 22 percent from a year earlier. Thin stocks mean there is less cushion when something goes wrong.

And the quote that stuck with me, because it is the difference between a bad month and a bad era: "Successive shocks since COVID have compounded, eroding food production capacity."

Eroding capacity. Not a blip. The ability to produce is what is being worn down.

Why the fertilizer part is not hype

You do not have to take a bank's word for the fertilizer squeeze. It is already showing up on the invoices American farmers are signing.

DTN tracks retail fertilizer prices every week. In the last week of May 2026, all eight major fertilizers were more expensive than they were a year earlier:

• Anhydrous ammonia at $1,118 a ton, up about 44 percent from a year before
• Urea at $823 a ton, up about 24 percent
• MAP at $953 a ton, up about 15 percent
• DAP at $914 a ton, up about 15 percent
• Potash at $494 a ton, up about 4 percent

Earlier in the spring it was worse. During the week of April 13, urea hit $858 a ton, which was up 49 percent year over year.

Now follow the chain, because this is the whole point. Fertilizer is the single biggest input cost on most row crop farms. When fertilizer goes up, a farmer has two choices. Pay more, or use less. Paying more means the cost gets passed to you at the register. Using less means smaller yields, which means less supply, which also means the cost gets passed to you at the register. There is no third door.

That is why a fertilizer story is a grocery story with a nine to eighteen month delay.

What is already happening at the grocery store

Here is where I want to be careful with you, because there is a lot of garbage on the internet right now claiming food prices have already doubled. They have not. Let me give you the real numbers instead.

USDA. As of its July 24, 2026 update, the USDA Economic Research Service forecast all food prices to rise 3.1 percent in 2026 and another 3.1 percent in 2027. Grocery prices specifically are forecast at 2.7 percent for 2026 and 2.9 percent for 2027. Those are ordinary looking numbers. But look at the range USDA puts around the 2027 grocery forecast: anywhere from down 5.6 percent to up 12.3 percent. That is an enormous spread, and it tells you the people whose job is forecasting food prices are not confident about next year.

Beef. USDA forecast beef and veal prices up 10.7 percent in 2026 alone. You already knew that one. You felt it at the meat counter.

The world. The FAO Food Price Index averaged 131.1 points in July 2026, its highest reading in about three years. To be fair and accurate, it is still 18.2 percent below the record set in March 2022, and it is only up about 1 percent from July 2025. So the world is not on fire today. It is warming up.

Hunger. The number that should stop all of us: about 2.1 billion people, roughly 25.8 percent of humanity, have experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. That is one in four people on the planet already living with an unreliable food supply, before anything JPMorgan is warning about even happens.

So no, groceries have not doubled. What is true is that costs are grinding upward, the buffer is thinner than it was, and serious people who are paid to be unemotional about this are writing the word "compounding."

Why 2027 is not far away when you are growing food

This is the part almost everybody gets wrong. When people hear 2027, they hear "later." A gardener hears "barely enough time."

Food does not appear the day you get worried. It appears on the plant's schedule, not yours. Radishes will forgive you and turn around in 20 to 30 days. Collards want 70 to 90 days from seed. Cabbage wants 85 to 110. A citrus tree you plant this fall is a small tree next year and a producing tree the year after that. A mango takes longer than that. Perennials pay you for decades, but they charge you patience up front.

Add it up. If a food supply problem shows up in the first half of 2027, then the garden that helps you through it has to go in the ground in 2026. Right now. Not when the news gets loud enough that everybody else is at the garden center buying the last bag of soil.

That is the honest reason I am writing this. Not because the sky is falling. Because seeds take time and people always wait.

What to plant in Florida right now

Here is the good news and it is bigger than the bad news. Fall is Florida's real growing season. While the rest of the country is putting the garden to bed, we are just getting started. Below are UF/IFAS planting windows for Central Florida, which is the region defined by State Roads 40 and 70, not by hardiness zone.

Plant in August and September:

• Snap beans. August to September. Ready in 45 to 60 days. Fast protein, and they feed your soil while they grow.
• Tomatoes. August to September. 90 to 110 days from seed, 70 to 90 from transplants. Get them in now so they set fruit before the cold.
• Carrots. August all the way through March. 70 to 120 days. They store in the ground, which is its own kind of pantry.

Plant starting in September:

• Collards. September to November. 70 to 90 days from seed, 50 to 70 from transplants. If I could only grow one green in Florida, this is it.
• Kale and mustard. September through February. Mustard is ready in 40 to 50 days.
• Broccoli and cabbage. September through February. These take a while, so start them on time.
• Lettuce. September through February. 60 to 80 days.
• Radish. September through March. 20 to 30 days. The crop that proves to a beginner that this actually works.
• Turnips. September to October. 40 to 60 days. You eat the root and the greens, which is two crops off one seed.

Look at that list one more time. A person who starts this weekend with beans, radishes, and collards is eating out of their own yard before Thanksgiving. Not in 2027. This year.

And that is just the annual vegetables. The perennials are where the real security lives. Moringa, longevity spinach, katuk, pigeon pea, cassava, sugarcane, mulberry, banana. Plant those once and they keep feeding you. My yard has more than 70 food plants in it and most of the volume comes off plants I planted years ago and mostly leave alone now.

Let us be honest about what a garden can and cannot do

I am not going to sell you a fantasy, because fantasies quit on people in November.

A backyard garden will not replace your grocery bill in year one. Anybody who tells you it will has something to sell you and no dirt under their fingernails. Year one is a learning year. You will lose plants. Something will eat your seedlings. You will plant at the wrong time at least once.

What it will do is take specific line items off your list permanently. Greens. Herbs. Peppers. Green onions. Sweet potatoes. Then citrus. Then bananas. Each year you take a little more back, and the part you have taken back does not care what fertilizer costs in Qatar.

That is the actual value here, and it is not really about money. It is control. When one out of every four people on earth already has an unreliable food supply, having twenty feet of collards behind your house is not paranoia. It is just being a grown up.

There is a second benefit nobody prices in. Food you grow is fresher, it is picked ripe, and you know exactly what did and did not get sprayed on it. I spent twelve years as a certified personal trainer watching people fight their health with the wrong food. The garden fixed more of that than any program I ever wrote.

Why I want to help a million people start a garden

My goal is one million people who learn to grow their own food, herbs, and medicine in their own backyards. Not a million subscribers. A million growers. There is a difference, and the difference is the whole point.

A subscriber watches. A grower eats.

I picked that number before any bank wrote any report, and I did not pick it because it sounds impressive. I picked it because of a simple piece of math. A family that grows food is harder to squeeze. Their health improves, their grocery bill has a floor under it, and they are less dependent on a supply chain that has now been described in writing by JPMorgan as compounding and eroding.

One family doing that is a nice story. A million families doing that is a different country.

Right now more than 40,000 Southern growers follow along with what we do here. I need that number to be a whole lot bigger, and I need the people in it to actually plant something, not just watch me plant something. That is why every free tool on this site exists.

So if this post did its job, do not share it. Plant something. Then share it.

What to do this week

Five steps. None of them cost much and none of them require you to believe a single word JPMorgan wrote.

1. Pick your spot today. Six hours of sun minimum. Close to a water spigot. Close to your back door, because the garden you walk past is the garden you take care of.
2. Start smaller than you want to. A 4 by 8 bed you actually tend beats a quarter acre you abandon in October. I have watched a hundred people quit from being too ambitious and almost nobody quit from starting small.
3. Put in one fast crop and one slow crop. Radishes for proof it works. Collards for the food. The fast crop is what keeps a beginner going.
4. Plant one perennial this fall. Moringa, a mulberry, a banana, a citrus tree. Fall is planting season for trees in Florida, and the tree you plant in October has a whole cool season to root in before summer tests it.
5. Write down your planting dates. Timing is the number one reason Florida gardens fail. Not soil, not bugs. People plant on a calendar that was written for Ohio.

The book behind all of this

Everything above is the short version. Grow Food NOT Lawns is the long version: how to build the sandy soil we actually have here, how to plant on Florida's calendar instead of a calendar written for somebody else's state, and how to lay a yard out so it feeds a family instead of decorating one.

It was written from a backyard, not a research station. That is the whole difference.

Frequently asked questions

Did JPMorgan really warn about a food crisis in 2027?

Yes. Financial press reported on August 17, 2026 on a JPMorgan research note titled Food Security Is National Security: A Compounding Storm, led by senior global economist Nora Szentivanyi. It projects global food inflation rising from about 2.8 percent in the first half of 2026 to about 5 percent in the first half of 2027, driven by war, weather, warehousing, water, and waste. Benzinga reported that JPMorgan did not respond to its request for comment, so treat it as a forecast covered by the press, not a guarantee.

Why do fertilizer shortages raise food prices?

Fertilizer is one of the largest input costs on a commercial farm. When prices spike, farmers either pay more, which gets passed to the shopper, or apply less, which lowers yields and tightens supply, which also raises prices. DTN reported all eight major fertilizers higher year over year as of late May 2026, with anhydrous ammonia up about 44 percent and urea up about 24 percent.

Are grocery prices actually going up in 2027?

USDA's Economic Research Service forecast grocery prices up 2.9 percent in 2027 as of its July 24, 2026 update, but its prediction range for that year runs from down 5.6 percent to up 12.3 percent. The wide range reflects real uncertainty. Beef and veal were already forecast up 10.7 percent in 2026.

What should I plant in Florida right now to prepare?

In Central Florida, UF/IFAS lists snap beans and tomatoes for August through September, carrots from August through March, and collards, kale, mustard, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, radish, and turnips starting in September. Radishes finish in 20 to 30 days and mustard in 40 to 50, so a garden started now produces food this fall. Also plant perennials such as moringa, mulberry, banana, and citrus, since fall is the right planting window for trees here.

Can a backyard garden really replace my groceries?

Not in the first year, and anybody promising that is selling something. What a garden does is permanently remove specific items from your list. Greens, herbs, peppers, green onions, and sweet potatoes come off first. Fruit follows once trees mature. Each season you take back a little more, and the part you have taken back is not affected by fertilizer markets or shipping lanes.

Is it too late to start a garden for 2027?

No, but the window is smaller than people think. Annual vegetables need 20 to 120 days depending on the crop, and fruit trees need years. A garden that helps you in 2027 needs to be started in 2026. That is the entire argument of this post.

How much land do I need?

Less than you think. A single 4 by 8 raised bed grows a serious amount of greens. Most people fail from starting too big, not too small. Start with one bed and one perennial, then add a bed each season.

The bottom line

A bank wrote a report. Reports are guesses with good spreadsheets attached. This one might be right and it might be early and it might be wrong.

Here is what does not depend on the report being right. Fertilizer already costs more. Beef already costs more. One in four people on this planet already cannot count on their food. And a collard seed still takes 70 days no matter what happens in the Strait of Hormuz.

You cannot control the supply chain. You can control twenty feet of dirt behind your house. Go control it.

One million growers. Start with one.

Grow Food NOT Lawns.

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Sources

• Benzinga, JPMorgan Says Food Inflation Could Double By 2027 As Hormuz Tensions And El Nino Collide (August 17, 2026)
• ZeroHedge, JPMorgan Warns Next Global Food Crisis Could Erupt Next Year
• USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook, Summary Findings (updated July 24, 2026)
• FAO, FAO Food Price Index (July 2026 release)
• DTN Progressive Farmer, Retail Fertilizer Trends (week of May 25, 2026)
• UF/IFAS Extension, SP 103/VH021: Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide

Growing conditions vary by site. Verify planting dates for your county against your local UF/IFAS Extension office. Economic forecasts are projections, not certainties.

Keep going: get the plant by plant details in The Southern Grow Guide entry for collards, see 7 crops you will regret not planting in Florida this summer, or read about the Fall Garden Kickoff Challenge if you want a coached season.