The possibility of a food crisis in India is no longer confined to droughts or monsoon failure. It is now being shaped by geopolitics. From the Russia-Ukraine war to rising tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, distant conflicts are beginning to influence what Indian farmers can afford to sow, and whether they can sow at all.

India today sits on a paradox. It is food-secure in the immediate sense, with grain stocks far exceeding buffer norms and welfare schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana continuing to feed over 80 crore people. Yet it is deeply insecure in the inputs that sustain this system. Fertiliser: arguably the backbone of India’s agricultural productivity, remains heavily import-dependent and acutely exposed to global disruptions.

The vulnerability begins with geography. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of the world’s oil passes, is also a critical artery for India’s fertiliser supply. Nearly half of India’s fertiliser imports transit this route. Any disruption, whether through conflict, blockade, or even heightened risk premiums, immediately drives up costs and constrains availability. At the same time, fertiliser production itself is energy-intensive. India relies on imported natural gas, much of it from the Gulf, to produce nitrogen-based fertilisers like urea. When geopolitical tensions tighten gas supplies, domestic production contracts. Reports of supply cuts to fertiliser plants during recent crises illustrate how quickly global instability translates into local scarcity.

This external exposure is compounded by internal distortion. India imports 100% of its potash, over 60% of its phosphates, and roughly a quarter of its urea. When global prices rise, as they did sharply in 2025 for DAP and other phosphatic fertilisers, the shock is transmitted directly into the domestic system. The state absorbs much of this through subsidies that now exceed Rs 2.5 lakh crore. While politically necessary, this model has created a deeper structural problem: it incentivises excessive fertiliser use.

Over time, this has produced a damaging cycle. Cheap fertilisers encourage over-application, particularly of nitrogen, degrading soil health and reducing nutrient efficiency. Farmers then require even more fertiliser to maintain yields, reinforcing dependence on both imports and subsidies. What emerges is a ‘doom loop’ of ecological decline and fiscal strain, one that leaves the system highly vulnerable to precisely the kind of global shocks now unfolding.

The early signs of stress are already visible. In major agricultural states, concerns over supply disruptions have triggered panic buying ahead of sowing seasons. The fear is not abstract: if fertilisers are unavailable or prohibitively expensive, yields will fall. India’s buffer stocks can absorb a single bad season, but they cannot offset sustained production shocks. Food security, in this sense, is not secured by storage alone; it depends on the continuity of input flows.

To its credit, India has begun to respond with a mix of short-term mitigation and longer-term reform. At the onset, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has reassured that there is “adequate buffer stock for both wheat and rice” which is “enough to take care of any PDS requirement as well as any emergency requirement”. Efforts to diversify fertiliser imports beyond traditional Gulf routes to countries such as Israel, Jordan, Canada, and Morocco reflect an attempt to reduce geographic concentration. Simultaneously, there is a push to expand domestic production under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Urea Mission, which aims to reduce reliance on volatile global markets.

More promising, however, are shifts in the technological and agronomic paradigm. The introduction of nano-urea, with significantly higher nutrient-use efficiency, offers a way to reduce overall fertiliser demand. Precision agriculture techniques, including drone-based applications, can further minimise wastage. Investments in bio-based alternatives and organic nutrient cycles signal a gradual move toward sustainability.

Yet these solutions will take time to scale, and their success depends on behavioural change as much as technological availability. Farmers accustomed to subsidised inputs may be slow to adopt new practices without clear incentives and institutional support. This is where policy reform becomes critical. The current subsidy regime, while cushioning farmers from price shocks, also perpetuates inefficiency. A shift toward income-based or acreage-linked support could encourage more rational fertiliser use while easing the fiscal burden on the state.

There are broader strategic questions as well. India’s dependence on imported energy and fertiliser feedstocks is unlikely to disappear in the near term. Long-term resilience will require deeper integration of energy and agricultural policy, through coal gasification, renewable-powered ammonia, and eventually green hydrogen. Without such alignment, the fertiliser sector will remain tethered to the volatility of global fuel markets.

At the same time, ecological limits are tightening. Soil degradation and water stress (which includes groundwater contamination and reducing water levels, among others), as well as overall climate variability, are interacting risks that no amount of fertiliser can fully offset. Continuing along the current path risks undermining the very productivity gains that fertilisers once enabled. In this context, the crisis also presents a blessing in disguise since it would push for a more expansive investment and exploration in organic farming and agriculture.

What India faces, then, is not an imminent collapse but a structural warning. The current moment exposes how deeply food security is intertwined with geopolitics, energy systems, climate risks, and domestic policy choices. Buffer stocks and subsidies can buy time, but they cannot substitute for systemic resilience.

The task ahead is to use this period of disruption to reconfigure the foundations of agricultural security, to reduce import dependence, rationalise incentives, restore ecological balance, and finally move towards a sustainable system. The risk is not only that India may face a food crisis if these vulnerabilities persist, but that it may continue to defer the reforms needed to prevent one.

In an era where wars are fought far from its borders but felt in its fields, India’s food security will depend less on how much it produces and more on how intelligently it reduces the risks embedded in that production. / DAILY WORLD /

( The writer is a researcher interested in topics including climate governance, geopolitics, history and society. Views expressed are her personal. )