Gas, war and the urea gap: Why its time for bold fertilizer reforms

fertilizer. For plants, nitrogen is a vital nutrient for growth—without it they cannot convert sunlight into energy. If all crops knew how to synthesize nitrogen from the air (which is available freely), there would be no need for urea.

But only leguminous plants like soy and peas know how to, not crops like rice, wheat, maize and sugarcane and many fruits and vegetables we consume.Which is why urea is a critical input for farmers in India and elsewhere. By the time this fiscal year rolls over, Indian farmers would have used nearly 40 million tonnes of urea. The government would have spent ₹1.26 trillion to subsidize urea for farmers; another ₹60,000 crore spent on subsidies for non-urea fertilizers.

A quarter of the urea consumed was imported.Most domestically produced urea is made using natural gas as input, also known as feedstock. About 85% of that is imported; most of it from Qatar. The country shut down its gas facilities after the Iran war started—leaving Indian farms in a quandary.When Israel and the US attacked Iran on 28 February, setting off a regional war in West Asia, the vulnerability of Indian agriculture, along with other Asian economies, was laid bare.

Iran blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a narrow 39km wide waterway that carries a fifth of global oil and natural gas shipments. To manage supply disruptions, many countries built strategic petroleum reserves for energy security following the oil shock in the 1970s. But such strategic reserves were not built for fertilizers.Multiple attacks on energy assets, particularly in Qatar (one single attack by Iran on its Ras Laffan facility on 18 March destroyed 17% of Qatar’s export capacity for up to five years), have jeopardized India’s natural gas