Author: SS Yadav
From the Red Fort on 15 August, the Prime Minister drew attention to the strategic importance of ensuring affordable access to fertilisers amid rising global costs and growing geopolitical uncertainties-a reality well understood by those working across the fertiliser industry. He noted that the Government has absorbed massive costs to provide internationally priced urea costing around `3,000 for less than `300, and DAP costing over `5,000 for just `1,350. He further added that essential resources are increasingly being weaponised in the world today.
That difference of nearly Rs 2,700 on a single bag of urea is, in the first instance, a measure of protection. It is the reason a farmer in Bundelkhand or Bolangir can plan a sowing season without tracking international commodity prices, and in a country of small and marginal landholdings, the Government’s decision to carry that weight has kept millions of cropping decisions viable. The size of the gap is also a reminder of where our vulnerabilities lie, because it reflects how much of the fertiliser supply chain sits beyond our borders. The more useful question, therefore, is not whether the protection is justified, but how well we use the stability it creates.
Against this background, the agriculture provisions of the New Delhi Declaration, adopted at the 18th BRICS Summit in the capital last month, deserve closer attention than they have received. The Declaration does not treat fertiliser as one more line in a trade schedule, but places fertiliser shortages within the larger framework of food security, agricultural productivity and resilient supply chains. BRICS leaders emphasised the need to mitigate acute price volatility and abrupt supply disruptions, including fertiliser shortages, and called for international coordination to strengthen the availability, accessibility, stability and affordability of agricultural and food production inputs.
For those of us in the fertiliser industry, this language reflects a shift we have already witnessed. The long-standing assumption in global fertiliser trade was that a buyer with the means to pay could always find a seller. Export restrictions, energy price volatility and disruptions to shipping routes have made that far less certain, with availability increasingly becoming the constraint rather than price.
India has pursued two complementary objectives: strengthening domestic capability while building dependable international partnerships. Government data shows domestic urea production rising to 306.67 lakh metric tonnes in 2024-25, about 35 per cent above the level a decade earlier, while production of phosphatic and potassic fertilisers has also increased significantly over the same period. At the same time, Indian companies have moved beyond reliance on spot purchases, building long-term supply arrangements with major fertiliser-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Morocco and Jordan. These partnerships have helped create more predictable and diversified supply channels, strengthening India’s resilience against disruptions in global fertiliser markets.
This is where BRICS becomes relevant to our sector, because the grouping brings together in a single forum both some of the world’s largest agricultural economies and several of its most significant fertiliser producers. India’s growing fertiliser relationship with Russia shows what such cooperation can achieve when pursued patiently. The larger opportunity, however, lies in moving beyond a collection of bilateral arrangements towards a predictable shared framework, in which rules are clear and responses to disruption are better coordinated across the wider BRICS agricultural ecosystem.
The Declaration points in that direction. It calls for facilitating intra-BRICS trade in agricultural products and production inputs through resilient and non-discriminatory supply chains, and supports further work on the proposed BRICS Grain Exchange, with a launch target of 2027 and scope for extension to other commodities. Of particular significance for our sector is the establishment of BRICS AGRIN, the Agro-Inputs, Genetic Resources and Information Network, conceived as a collaborative, voluntary and farmer centric platform, complemented by closer cooperation on agroecology, regenerative agriculture and digital agriculture.
Frameworks of this kind are, it must be said, easier to draft than to operationalise, and their value will be judged by how quickly their provisions become working institutions with defined timelines. That is why India’s position matters at this juncture. As host of the Summit and one of the largest fertiliser consumers within the grouping, it is well placed to help ensure these commitments are carried forward with seriousness and pace.
This complements the vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat. Self-reliance in fertilisers is sometimes misunderstood as a withdrawal from global markets, which it cannot be, since geology rather than policy determines where the world’s potash and rock phosphate reserves lie. It means building enough capacity, storage and sourcing flexibility to engage with world markets from a position of confidence rather than compulsion.
It is here that the cooperative sector has a particular responsibility: farmers should not have to bear the volatility they had no part in creating. At KRIBHCO, we work at the point where national policy either reaches a farmer or fails to, and our task is not simply to place fertiliser in a village at the right time, important as that is. It is also to ensure that every kilogram of nutrient entering a field does the work it is meant to do, through balanced nutrient management, soil test based application, more efficient products, and the patient work of changing practices followed for generations. A country that imports less and wastes less is doubly secure, and efficiency, in that sense, is domestic capacity by another name.
The question before us is therefore changing in character, from how we secure the next consignment to how we build a fertiliser system that holds when the external environment turns uncertain. The Prime Minister’s message from the Red Fort was, in the end, about preparedness, and about national capability being the most dependable form of insurance.
India should continue to build at home, deepen its partnerships abroad and work collectively through platforms such as BRICS. When the security of fertiliser supply is strengthened, so is the security of the Indian farmer, and with it the food security of the nation.
The writer is Managing Director, KRIBHCO