Mint Explainer | Slipping atmanirbharta in fertilizers?

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India’s fertilizer supply strategy is once again under strain. Despite years of policy focus on boosting domestic output and cutting import dependence, fertilizer imports have surged in the current financial year as rising farm demand outpaces local production, with implications for subsidies, soil health and food security.

Mint explains the numbers behind the surge in fertilizer imports and why domestic production is struggling to keep pace with demand. According to the Fertilizer Association of India (FAI), India’s fertilizer supply chain has seen a sharp rebalancing towards imports in FY26 to ensure nutrient availability for farms. Between April and November, urea imports surged 120% year-on-year to 7.2 million tonnes, even as domestic production fell 3.7% during the same period.

Imports of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), another widely used fertilizer, rose 54% to 5.5 million tonnes, while imports of complex NPK fertilizers nearly doubled to 2.7 million tonnes. FAI has said that imports have become structural in nature and can no longer be seen as merely supplementing domestic production. The surge marks a setback to India’s long-standing push for fertilizer self-sufficiency.

In 2020, then fertilizer minister D. V. Sadananda Gowda had said India could achieve atmanirbharta (self-sufficiency) by 2023 through revival of old urea plants and adoption of technologies such as nano urea.

While India did reduce its import dependence on urea from 28% of domestic consumption in 2020-21 to about 15% in 2024-25, the spike in demand this year has disrupted that trajectory. In 2024-25, around 77% of India’s total fertilizer consumption was met through domestic production. That share dropped to 64%