If there is one clear lesson for India from the latest crisis around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, it is this: a country cannot afford to depend so heavily on imported inputs for a product on which its food system depends.
In this case, that product is urea. The Gulf still accounts for 20–30 percent of India’s urea imports, 30 percent of DAP imports, and nearly half of its LNG imports, a key feedstock for urea production. India managed this round of disruption through alternative sourcing and buffer stocks for the kharif season, but the larger vulnerability remains: while India produces 83 percent of the urea it uses domestically, much of that production still depends on imported natural gas, LNG and ammonia.
Why fertiliser dependence is now a geopolitical issue
India is the world’s second-largest fertiliser consumer, but its urea-heavy model has created a serious nutrient imbalance. Because urea is heavily subsidised and far cheaper than other nutrients, farmers often apply more nitrogen than the soil needs, damaging soil health, polluting groundwater and wasting much of the fertiliser through leaching and volatilisation.
[Also read: Nitrogen: India’s favorite fertiliser, and the slow damage it’s doing ]
This is where sustainability and geopolitics meet. India’s fertiliser vulnerability is not just about moving shipments in a crisis, but about sustaining a chemically intensive agricultural system that still depends on fragile overseas supply lines. The latest disruption may have been manageable, but it exposed how vulnerable that system remains. (Reuters)
So, what should India do? The answer is not to imagine that nitrogen can disappear from Indian farming overnight. It cannot. Nor is the goal to completely replace urea across all crops and geographies.
The more realistic objective is to reduce unnecessary dependence, improve nitrogen-use efficiency, and replace a portion of chemical nitrogen with more sustainable alternatives wherever possible.
Can green ammonia reduce India’s fertiliser risk?
One of the most discussed long-term pathways is green ammonia, produced using renewable energy and green hydrogen instead of fossil-fuel-based feedstocks. India’s green hydrogen push is beginning to create a policy foundation for this shift under the National Green Hydrogen Mission, while companies such as Reliance, Adani, ACME and NTPC Green are already positioning themselves in the sector.
This matters because ammonia is the upstream building block for nitrogen fertilisers. Over time, green ammonia could help reduce the imported-energy risk built into India’s fertiliser system and make production more resilient. But its role should not be overstated. It is not an immediate answer to India’s farm-level overuse of urea, nor does it solve the deeper problem of inefficient fertiliser application on the ground.
What India can learn from China
The problem for India is two-fold: dependence on supply and inefficiency in application. That is why it should pay close attention to what China did after 2015. Faced with the ecological costs of chemical-heavy farming, China did not simply tell farmers to use less fertiliser. It built systems that made reduced use workable.
Its chemical fertiliser use peaked in 2015 and then declined, even as grain output continued to rise. One important tool was soil-testing-based formulated fertilisation, which matched nutrients more closely to local soil conditions and crop needs. Demonstration plots showed that this could cut unnecessary fertiliser use by 15 to 30 kilograms per hectare while still increasing yields in major crops.
That lesson matters for India. The overuse of urea is not simply a farmer-level decision; it is the outcome of a system shaped by cheap nitrogen, weak extension support, poor soil intelligence, and limited access to precision tools. China’s experience shows that reducing chemical dependence requires a full ecosystem: soil testing, advisory systems, locally available customised blends, mechanised precision application, and strong last-mile extension.
India has begun moving in that direction through budget support for digital agriculture, soil mapping, and drones, as well as PM-PRANAM, which was meant to encourage states to reduce chemical fertiliser use. But implementation still falls well short of the scale required. PM-PRANAM, for instance, has struggled to move from policy design to actual incentive delivery.
The fertiliser alternatives India should be backing
In addition to policy reform, India also needs a broader basket of alternatives. Bio-fertilisers such as Rhizobium, Azotobacter and Azospirillum can reduce chemical nitrogen demand in some crop systems, while green manuring with crops such as dhaincha and sunnhemp can help restore both nitrogen and organic matter to the soil. Agroecological models such as Andhra Pradesh’s community-managed natural farming further show that reducing external chemical dependence is possible when extension, peer learning and local biological inputs are organised at scale. None of these are silver bullets, but together they offer a practical way to gradually reduce the dependence built into Indian farming.
Nano urea is often presented as another solution, but it should be approached more cautiously. While it may offer advantages such as easier transport and lower subsidy costs, mixed results suggest it is better treated as a supplement than as a one-to-one replacement for conventional urea.
India’s fertiliser debate is really about national food security
India’s fertiliser challenge now stretches far beyond agronomy. A farming system built around nitrogen-heavy inputs, while still relying on uncertain external supply chains for key raw materials, leaves the country exposed in ways that are both economic and strategic. Building greater resilience will require cleaner production, better nutrient management, stronger extension support and a serious push towards biological and precision-based alternatives. In the years ahead, India’s food security will depend as much on reducing this dependence as on managing it.
