Illustrated: A Farmer from Punjab, India navigating Fertilizer Price-hikes

What does the West Asia Conflict mean for India’s Kharif Farming Season in 2026?

Rising DAP prices, disrupted fertilizer imports, shortage and demands of Urea supply, and a below-normal monsoon could reshape India’s Kharif 2026 season. What farmers should know about urea supply, soil health, and input planning.

There is a farmer in Punjab's Moga district who started buying urea and diesel last month, weeks before they normally would. They are not panicking, but reading the situation. A war has been underway in West Asia since late February — involving the US-Israel coalition and Iran, disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — and this farmer has understood something that policy documents and press releases have not yet communicated clearly enough to farmers across India: what happens in the Gulf does not stay in the Gulf. It arrives, eventually, in a fertilizer bag.

This piece is not about fear. It is about knowing what is actually happening, what the numbers say, and what a farmer can do between now and the monsoon to make this season more manageable.      

How Much of India's Farming Depends on West Asia

India imports more than 40% of its total fertilizer requirements — and a large share of that comes from the Gulf region. More than 60% of India's imports of urea and DAP (Di-Ammonium Phosphate), and nearly 80% of ammonia and Sulphur imports, are sourced from Gulf countries. Ammonia is the base raw material for urea production. Sulphur is essential for making DAP. Both have been significantly disrupted since the Strait of Hormuz saw its first major shipping interference in February 2026.

Illustrated: India’s Fertilizers’ Demand and Supply Numerical

India's largest LNG importer declared force majeure after upstream suppliers cited delivery issues due to cargo disruptions. State-owned gas distributors — GAIL, IOC, BPCL — cut supplies to fertilizer manufacturing units, reducing effective supply to below 50% at some plants. Many urea facilities are now running at reduced capacity.

CRISIL Ratings, in a March 2026 note, warned that domestic fertilizer production could contract by 10–15% if disruptions continue through May. For the kharif season — which needs fertilizer starting June — this timeline is tight.

What Has Already Happened to Prices

The numbers are direct. Before the conflict escalated, DAP prices in international markets were hovering around $720–730 per ton. India's fertilizer companies recently finalized import tenders at $920–930 per ton — an increase of roughly 28% in weeks. China is currently not exporting DAP. Morocco, which holds some of the world's largest phosphate reserves, is facing production constraints because Gulf disruptions have cut Sulphur supply — and Sulphur is what turns rock phosphate into DAP.

Illustrated: DAP Global Market Prices, Subsidy and International Policy

The government has done several things to manage this. It has approved Nutrient Based Subsidy rates for Kharif 2026 — with a total outlay of approximately ₹41,500 crore, about ₹4,300 crore more than last season. It has directed that 70% of available gas be allocated to urea manufacturers. It has identified alternative suppliers in Indonesia, Belarus, Morocco, Russia, and China. Total national fertilizer stocks currently stand at just under 20 million tones — higher than last year's 17.8 million tones at the same time.

So the government is not unprepared. But preparation at the national level and availability at the village level are two different things. Last year, during the June 2025 Israel-Iran 12-day conflict — a shorter and less severe disruption — DAP officially priced at ₹1,350 a bag was reportedly sold for as much as ₹1,800 in the grey market. Dealers said there was a shortage. Farmers said there was a shortage. The fertilizer had not disappeared — it had been diverted. That memory is fresh, and farmers heading into kharif 2026 are right to plan ahead.

And Then There Is the Monsoon

A war disrupting fertilizer imports would be a problem in any year. In 2026, it coincides with a monsoon that is expected to be below normal.

The India Meteorological Department's first long-range forecast, issued in April 2026, predicts the southwest monsoon at 92% of the Long Period Average — firmly in the below-normal category. The LPA is 87 cm across June to September; India may receive around 80 cm. IMD's own models show the El Niño conditions likely to develop during the monsoon itself, becoming stronger in the second half — meaning August and September, exactly when standing kharif crops like paddy, soybean, and cotton are in their most water-intensive growth stage.

Private forecaster Skymet is slightly more cautious, projecting 94% of LPA with a 30% probability of drought. Its assessment is blunt: only June is likely to see normal rainfall. July and August — the two most critical months for kharif sowing and establishment — are projected below normal.

A below-normal monsoon matters beyond just water. It changes how fertilizer behaves in the field. Under good rainfall, nutrients applied to soil have moisture to dissolve into and pathways to reach roots. Under moisture stress, applied urea can volatilize — evaporate as ammonia gas before plants absorb it — wasting both money and input. The same bag of fertilizer, applied in a dry field, delivers less nutrition to the crop.

And there is the disease angle, which goes the other way. In years where rainfall is erratic — dry spells followed by sudden wet bursts — fungal disease pressure on paddy, cotton, and soybean increases significantly. Sheath blight, blast, and bacterial blight in paddy thrive when humidity spikes after dry stress. Dense crop canopy and excess nitrogen create soft plant tissue that is more vulnerable to infection. More pesticide cost follows. The season's economics tighten from multiple sides at once.

What Prime Minister Modi Said 

On May 11, at a gathering in Secunderabad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed this situation directly. Speaking to farmers, he said: "We import chemical fertilizers in large quantities from abroad. We should reduce our consumption of chemical fertilizers by half and move towards natural farming using organic fertilizer. This way, we can save foreign currency and our farms and Mother Earth."

He asked for a 50% reduction in chemical fertilizer use and endorsed natural farming as both an ecological and a national-economic response to import dependency. 

Illustrated: PM Narendra Modi’s address to Indian Farmers on Organic Fertilizers

This is not the first time the Prime Minister has made this appeal. But the context this year is different. It is being made while fertilizer prices are rising, while shipping routes are disrupted, and while the monsoon is forecast to underperform. The alignment between the policy signal and the ground reality is sharper than it has been in years.

What This Means at the Field Level

Here is what a farmer preparing for kharif 2026 can carry forward from this picture.

First, plan early and plan honestly. The government says stocks are adequate. That may be true at the national level. At the district and village level, stock availability during peak sowing weeks is a different question. If you can source your urea and DAP before the June rush, do it. Store it properly — away from moisture, because monsoon humidity degrades bagged fertilizer faster than most people account for.

Second, the economics of overuse have shifted. Even setting aside soil health, applying the same volume of urea as previous years when DAP costs 28% more and monsoon distribution is uncertain is a financial risk. The return on each rupee of synthetic input has decreased. This is the year to ask your agronomist or Krishi Vigyan Kendra what a more efficient input schedule would look like for your soil type and crop.

Third, soil that holds organic carbon needs less synthetic nitrogen to produce the same yield. This is not philosophy. It is soil chemistry. Organic carbon in soil holds water, reduces nitrogen volatilization, and supports microbial populations that make nutrients available to roots in forms that synthetic fertilizer alone cannot replicate. Soils that have been under continuous rice-wheat or cotton monoculture for twenty or more years — the dominant systems in Punjab, Haryana, Telangana, and parts of Maharashtra — have almost no organic carbon buffer left. A urea bag applied to depleted soil is doing less work per kilogram than it did a decade ago.

Rebuilding that buffer is a multi-season project. But starting this kharif — with green manuring before transplantation, with compost incorporation if available, with restraint on excessive urea top-dressing — begins to change that trajectory. What the government is now calling natural farming, and what soil scientists call organic carbon management, is also what makes a farmer less exposed to what happens in the Strait of Hormuz next year, or the year after.

Fourth, pest and disease scouting matters more this season. A below-normal monsoon with erratic distribution creates ideal conditions for both water stress and sudden humidity spikes. Scout paddy fields early for signs of blast and sheath blight. In cotton, watch for boll rot in wet patches. In soybean, bacterial blight follows waterlogged low-lying areas. Catching disease pressure in its first week is far cheaper than managing it in its third.

Illustrated: Prediction of India’s Agriculture by 2030

The Bigger Picture

India produces enough food to feed itself. That is a real and hard-won achievement. But the system that produces that food has become structurally dependent on inputs from countries thousands of kilometers away — LNG from Qatar, ammonia from the Gulf, rock phosphate from Morocco, potash from Belarus. Each of those supply chains has a chokepoint. The West Asia war has activated one of them.

This is not a crisis that a single kharif season can resolve. It is a structural question that India's farmers, input companies, and policymakers are going to be navigating for the next decade. The direction the Prime Minister pointed to on Sunday — reduce chemical use, build soil health, reduce import dependency — is not idealistic. It is increasingly practical.

A farmer who goes into kharif 2026 with a soil that holds more water, needs less urea, and supports healthier crop biology is not just a better farmer. In this particular year, they are also a more financially protected one.

That is what farming better means when the world gets complicated.