Super El Niño, heatwave and fertiliser crisis: India must go beyond Green Revolution

The year 2026 doesn’t appear to be good for Indian farmers. March and April were lashed by untimely rains and hailstorms, and now we hear of various heatwave alerts in the country. As per some estimates, 2.49 lakh hectares are already affected, dampening the Rabi harvest.

New bad news comes from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) that India will have a below-average monsoon. So how does a bad monsoon translate for Indian farmers and our food security?

A little insight into the weather report first. As per the IMD, India will be receiving 92 per cent of its 87 cm long period average (LPA) rains in the months of June-September. What does this mean? In simple terms, 2015 had a below-average monsoon pegged at 93 per cent of the LPA, and 2015 was one of the worst drought years.

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Top this calamity off with the fact that 2026 is a Super El Niño year, which means we will be witnessing a much drier monsoon and erratic weather. A 92 per cent monsoon and Super El Niño is a double weather trouble for our farmers and policymakers, who need to immediately start preparation.

The troubles are not done yet; the third threat comes from the Iran War and disruption of fossil fuel, gas and agri-chemical supply. FAO, UNDP and other agencies have issued serious warnings for agriculture, food security and malnutrition. India, as per the UNDP, is the second most affected country where millions will be pushed into poverty if the Iran War doesn’t stop soon due to high gas, fossil fuel and agri-chemical inflation.

But why are these issues plaguing Indian farmers? The simple answer is over-dependence on industrial agriculture or the “Green Revolution” paradigm of agrarian thinking. The Green Revolution was the introduction of industrial agriculture in India. It was founded on agri-chemicals, hybrid or input-intensive seeds and mechanisation. A system of agriculture which is contingent on a healthy oil and gas industry and market.

Most of the agri-chemicals are derivatives of fossil fuels. For example, natural gas is a vital component of urea. In fact, 60-70 per cent of the total cost of production of urea is the cost of gas.

If we study even more deeply, the Green Revolution is a mini oil and gas revolution in agriculture. Each layer of industrial farming or the Green Revolution will have a link to the oil and gas industry. For example, fossil fuels were needed to run the agrarian machinery, and food trucks transport the food. And oil and gas are used to make hundreds of agri-chemicals.

Hence, till the time our country propagates Green Revolution-style agriculture, we will always be dependent on Gulf states or other oil and gas-producing nations for agri-chemical supplies. Critical fertilisers like urea, DAP, sulphur, etc, are all sourced from the Gulf states, and experts are already warning how Indian agriculture will suffer deeply if fertiliser shipments, along with gas to make domestic urea, don’t reach India in time. So basically, our food security is in other nations’ hands.

In the short term, the Green Revolution delivered gains, but failed to address newer challenges like climate change, food-style diseases, market disruptions (Iran War) and ecology. Whereas the older forms of Vedic/natural/organic agriculture, which were practised in the subcontinent, took into account the weather, soil fertility, ecology and food nutrition as primary pillars of agriculture.

So, what can our government do? The first thing is to absorb the industrial agrarian shockwave. The war in Iran may escalate further and the Gulf’s capacity to produce oil and gas, alongside agri-chemicals, will be highly diminished. Once the war ends, the Gulf may not be able to provide us with our energy and fertiliser needs. Therefore, we have to look towards Russia to once again be the major partner for India and supply fossil fuels and agri-chemicals. But this is a short-term solution.

The long-term solution is to expand programmes like the PM-PRANAM scheme (Prime Minister’s Programme for Restoration, Awareness, Nourishment, and Amelioration of Mother Earth) on a war footing. But the first step towards this is also rooted in the rejuvenation of indigenous agrarian wisdom.

The government should mandate a number of bio-fertiliser and bio-pesticide units per district. District collectors and agriculture officers should be given monthly targets across all blocks within the district, and a special fund should be granted for the creation of these units. Funds from the stray cattle shelter programme should also be utilised to gather all the cattle and have vermicompost and bio-fertiliser units placed around them.

For the first five years, the government needs to ensure farmers can collect free fertilisers from these units. The cost would be significantly lesser for the taxpayers too, who are burdened with a heavier fertiliser subsidy bill each year. And we won’t be losing our forex reserves too. Uttar Pradesh can be used as a model state to implement this pilot.

The next step is including a new district organic/Vedic agriculture department, with at least five officials who are responsible for training farmers, helping with queries, providing market linkage and helping them understand the monsoon patterns as per the traditional knowledge system.

The government also needs to set up a Vedic agriculture university to recover the lost knowledge of agriculture in our culture. The aim of this university is to refine the agrarian techniques including seed treatments, composting, horticulture, weather prediction, animal husbandry, etc, and present them for the modern farmer.

Vedic agriculture uses similar methods as bio-dynamic agriculture, and hence can easily be accepted globally as a sustainable way of farming. Plus, older methods of agriculture were very accurate in weather prediction, without the use of modern technologies; there needs to be a re-investigation in case many of them stand the litmus test of time even today.

Once our farmers have role models and resources for Vedic agriculture, they themselves will see the profitability in farming without market inputs and chemical poisons. Soil and water will be conserved and practices like multi-cropping could return to our fields again, making the nutrition per acre increase. Also, we will have more climate-resilient crops and fields, which can withstand bad monsoons and hotter months more easily.

If India wants to ensure total food security along with soil, water security and climate resilience, we have to phase out foreign dependence and put efforts into building an agrarian policy forged by our indigenous wisdom and not the Green Revolution anymore. Then only can we bring a Krishi Swaraj.

(The author is an independent agri-policy analyst and former director – Policy and Outreach, National Seed Association of India. He tweets at @Indrassingh. Views are personal.)