From Fertiliser Shortage to Heatwaves: Why India's Food Security Is Under Stress
The country’s food sovereignty is increasingly constrained by energy geopolitics, writes Rohin Kumar.
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On the evening of 10 May, addressing a rally at Secunderabad Parade Ground, Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued ‘seven appeals’, asking citizens to ration fuel, defer gold purchases, revive work-from-home, cut edible oil consumption, postpone foreign travel, and adopt natural farming.
The agriculture-specific ask was precise: reduce chemical fertiliser consumption by half and shift towards natural farming, framed explicitly as a way to save foreign currency.
This clearly shows how the country’s food sovereignty is becoming increasingly constrained by energy geopolitics.
The New Drivers of Food Insecurity in India
Even as the Kharif season approaches and the government assures farmers of adequate stocks, 2026 is shaping up to be a particularly difficult year for farmers and agribusinesses, with multiple climate-related stresses converging at once:
Erratic weather patterns: El Niño conditions and recurring western disturbances are already affecting harvests.
Extreme heat stress: Large parts of north and central India are witnessing prolonged heatwaves and wet-bulb conditions.
Poor monsoon outlook: Forecasts by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and Skymet Weather suggest below-normal rainfall this year, potentially making it one of the driest monsoon seasons in the last eight years.
Rising risk of extreme events: Floods, cyclones, pest attacks, and other extreme weather events expected later in the year are likely to deepen existing vulnerabilities within India’s food system.
On top of all this, global supply chain disruptions have halted imports and exports, driven up crude oil prices, and triggered cascading shortages of LPG, petrochemicals, and fertilisers.
Until now, the natural farming discourse had always focused on agroecology, soil health, biodiversity, farmer wellbeing, and sustainability. But the PM's austerity speech positioned natural farming as a geopolitical and economic-security strategy.
It is also critical to understand future governance models, evolving food politics, and state-society relations in India.
Moreover, the West Asia war has exposed market and storage constraints that are resulting in crop losses during transit and reducing incomes.
Export disruptions have affected states like Punjab, Maharashtra, Kerala and Haryana, which rely on premium agricultural markets. These losses cannot be compensated for in domestic markets due to their inability to absorb the surplus or provide the expected premium prices.
Increased Frequency of Extreme Weather Events
On the evening of 14 May, dust storms across north India, and particularly Uttar Pradesh, killed more than 100 people, ripped through harvested chickpea fields, shredded mango orchards, and destroyed homes.
Earlier this March-April, farmers across north India witnessed Rabi crops like wheat, mustard, pigeon pea, chickpea, and floriculture crops like marigold flatten under unseasonal rain and hailstorms just weeks before harvest.
These dust storms, lightning, unseasonal heavy rains, and hailstorms triggered have also disrupted the Zaid sowing season.
Zaid crops—grown between Rabi and Kharif seasons, such as moong dal, urad dal, cucumber, watermelon, bitter gourd, muskmelon and fodder grains—often act as a buffer for farmers.
Due to their shorter crop duration and the peak summer demand they coincide with, these crops become even more critical, offering additional financial returns to farmers. Hence, farmers who have suffered Rabi losses cannot afford to miss the Zaid window. But the delays in sowing compress the growing period and directly impact yields.
Zaid farmers also have to be vigilant about residual moisture from unpredictable rainfall, as it could trigger fungal disease in crops.
The Fertiliser Crisis, Inflation, and the Ripple Effect on Farming
India is the world’s second-largest consumer of fertilisers after China, making fertilisers a critical input for its agricultural system. Reports suggest that India is now importing nearly 25 million tonnes of urea at prices almost double what it was paying just a few months ago.
India’s fertiliser imports are also under significant pressure due to West Asia war.
There are three major chemical fertilisers commonly used in India: urea, Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) and Muriate of Potash (MOP).
Among these, urea accounts for the highest consumption largely because it is heavily subsidised. DAP and MOP, by contrast, fall under the nutrient-based subsidy (NBS) scheme, in which the Central government fixes subsidy rates while market prices determine the remaining cost.
The gap between the actual delivered cost and the market price is reimbursed by the government to manufacturers and importers as subsidy support.
Despite volatility in global markets, the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers recently announced that the MRP of DAP would remain fixed at Rs 1,350 per 50 kg bag. Yet, reports of hoarding and black marketing have already emerged from several parts of the country, offering an indication of the stress building within the agricultural supply system.
Rising input costs inevitably affect how farmers use fertilisers. Many within the social sector view the present fertiliser crisis as an opportunity to accelerate a transition towards chemical-free or natural farming.
This position is now also being reinforced by the PM and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare through initiatives such as the “Khet Bachao Abhiyan”.
However, a rapid shift away from chemical-intensive farming carries its own risks. Changes in cropping patterns or transitions to low-input agriculture require long-term institutional support, stable markets, extension services and sustained farmer assistance. Without such support systems, abrupt transitions could further strain already vulnerable farming communities.
The consequences are not limited to agriculture alone. Rising fertiliser and fuel costs eventually feed into food prices, shaping household living standards and influencing policy responses.
Taken together, fertiliser shortages during the Kharif season, stress from the Rabi and Zaid cycles, prolonged heatwaves, below-average rainfall forecasts and broader inflationary pressures are expected to affect crop yields and deepen concerns around India’s food security.
Volatile Climate, Labour Stress and the Changing Rural Workforce
Heatwaves and extreme weather events have, unfortunately, become frequent shocks for Indian farmers. What makes this year different, however, is the simultaneity of these crises and the cascading effects they are triggering across the agricultural economy.
Extreme heat is also reducing labour productivity (working hours), particularly in labour-intensive agricultural operations such as paddy cultivation that employ millions of farm workers.
This is especially significant in the Indian context, where a large proportion of cultivators are sharecroppers, contract farmers or smallholders with marginal landholdings. As a result, many farmers simultaneously function as wage labourers during different phases of the agricultural cycle.
Farmers doing only two crop cycles (Rabi and Kharif) are forced to take up factory work, MNREGA (now VB-RAM-G), or other minimal jobs during summer months to keep their families afloat.
At the same time, labour shortages are creating additional pressure on the farm economy.
Reverse and distress migration—partly driven by rising living costs and LPG-related insecurities—has interrupted established labour flows. In response, farmers and agri-enterprises are being forced to offer higher wages to retain workers, even as their own margins continue to shrink.
The Skymet and IMD's prediction of ‘below normal rainfall’ adds to the worries of farmers, as monsoon rainfall provides up to 80 percent of the annual precipitation in India.
This is worrying not only for Kharif crops, but also for the Rabi season later in the year, since rainfall levels will determine the health of reservoirs, groundwater, and other irrigation sources.
However, the crisis extends beyond crop farmers. According to government estimates, nearly 55 percent of India’s population is engaged in agriculture and allied sectors i.e poultry, livestock, fisheries, beekeeping, forestry and plantation work. For these communities, extreme heat reduces livestock productivity, increases fish mortality, and degrades ecosystems that sustain livelihoods.
Rising input costs and climate variability further destabilises these fragile income systems.
India Needs a Systemic Reset in Agriculture Policy
Although the current crisis has been triggered by geopolitical instability, it is also an opportunity for India to reassess and re-strategise its agriculture and food systems. The country needs a more integrated approach, one that connects farm-level interventions with markets, finance, labour policy and climate adaptation, rather than treating each of these as isolated sectors.
Both short-term and long-term measures are necessary. In the immediate term, ensuring the availability of fertilisers and other critical agri-food inputs during periods of global volatility must remain a priority.
This would require diversifying import sources, building strategic buffer stocks, expanding domestic production capacity, improving storage infrastructure and ensuring transparent allocation systems that prevent hoarding and distress sales.
Over the longer term, India will need sustained investment in climate-resilient agricultural systems.
This includes,
Accelerating the adoption of indigenous and climate-resilient crop varieties.
Encouraging diversification, and expanding scientific cultivation techniques, such as the System of Rice Intensification, particularly for water-intensive crops like paddy.
Integrated water and nutrient management practices—including precision agriculture, mulching, micro-irrigation, and the restoration of traditional water bodies such as lakes and wells.
Rural employment programmes such as VB-RAM-G could potentially support some of this restoration work.
Equally critical is addressing labour vulnerabilities through stronger social protection measures and workforce stabilisation policies. These could include extending public employment or cash-for-work programmes during peak agricultural seasons, introducing heat-safety protocols, and enabling more flexible working hours during extreme weather conditions.
Responding to them will require a balanced approach—one that enables long-term systemic transformation while ensuring that transitions remain manageable for farmers.
Today, farmers are being asked to invest more, work under increasingly harsh conditions and absorb growing levels of uncertainty, often without adequate institutional support. The absence of coordinated public investment in climate-adapted infrastructure, risk-sharing mechanisms and rural resilience must be urgently addressed if India is to build a more secure and sustainable food system.
(Rohin Kumar is a roving reporter, author and filmmaker attempting to chronicle humanitarian crises. His areas of interest are environmental justice and human rights. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the authors' own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)