India’s agricultural achievement is one of its great post-Independence success stories. From the brink of famine in the mid-1960s, the country is now among the world’s largest producers of wheat, rice, and sugar, with foodgrain output exceeding 330 million tonnes in 2023-24 — more than five times what it was in 1947.

But, a closer examination reveals that India’s food security rests on a continuous supply of synthetic fertilisers derived from imported natural gas, phosphate, and potash. The countries that supply these inputs are, overwhelmingly, the same Gulf States that supply India’s oil, and the US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed this dependence.

This dependence is not just in India. In a recent essay in the Financial Times, economist Adam Hanieh lays out how thoroughly the Gulf has embedded itself in global agriculture. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest exporter of urea, and the second-largest exporter of ammonia. Roughly half of all global seaborne sulphur — the key input in making phosphate fertilisers — passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

As a large agricultural producer, India is among the most vulnerable. According to the government’s response in Parliament, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar together supplied more than three-quarters of India’s ammonia imports in 2024. In 2024-25, Oman alone supplied 26 lakh metric tonnes of India’s urea imports, Saudi Arabia supplied 19 lakh tonnes of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), and Russia, which routes much of its supply through Gulf logistics corridors, supplied another 18 lakh tonnes of potash. Potash, which almost every crop requires, is 100% imported.

Overall, the........

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