The protein system
FAO Food Balance Sheets put India's total protein supply at 73.19 grams per person per day in 2022, of which 53.59 grams came from plants and 19.6 from animals, a plant share of 73 per cent.[1, 2] Cereals deliver close to half of dietary protein, well above the 32 per cent the National Institute of Nutrition recommends, while pulses contribute 11 per cent against a recommended 19.[19] Composition matters more than the total: only 15.4 per cent of Indian cereals are fed to animals, against 50.8 per cent in the United States, 42.1 in China and 66.6 in Brazil.[21]
The animal protein that exists is domestic and low-input. Milk output of 247.87 million tonnes in 2024-25 gives 485 grams per person per day against a global average near 322, and India has led world milk production since 1998.[3, 4] Egg output was 149.11 billion, second globally, and meat 10.50 million tonnes, fourth globally.[4] Fish production reached 19.78 million tonnes in , roughly double the 2013-14 level, making India second in aquatic animal production at 9 per cent of world output, second in aquaculture at 12 per cent of farmed output, and the largest inland capture fishery at 2.2 million tonnes.[6, 7] Foodgrain output hit a record 357.73 million tonnes, rice 150.18 million, wheat 117.94 and pulses 25.68.[5] Almost none of the protein Indians eat crosses a border to reach them.
Durable domestic capacity:
India produces enough dairy, eggs, meat and fish for domestic demand; pulses are the main protein deficit. But household intake is lower and more unequal than food-balance-sheet supply. The 2023–24 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey measured mean protein intake at 55.6 grams per person per day; the richest decile consumed 1.5 times the poorest, and poorer households reached only 38 per cent of recommended egg, fish and meat intake.[1, 19] SOFI 2026 estimates 142.5 million people were undernourished in 2023–25.[17]
Resource headroom:
India's protein mix uses relatively little grain as feed, but water and land are under pressure. Internal renewable freshwater is 1,014 cubic metres per person, below the 1,700 water-stress threshold; withdrawals use 66.5 per cent of available internal resources.[22, 23] Groundwater supplies close to 60 per cent of irrigation, and extraction reached 60.4 per cent of annual recharge in 2024.[24, 25]
Pulse area, the crop most needed to diversify protein, fell from 30.6 million hectares in 2021/22 to 26.9 million in 2024/25.[9] Cropland and arable land stayed nearly flat in absolute terms between 2000 and 2024, but fell about 28–30 per cent per person as population grew.[50, 52]
Irrigation equips 75.5 million hectares, 49.1 per cent of arable land; roughly half of net sown area remains rain-fed.[27, 34, 50] Agriculture's share of bank credit rose to 12.9 per cent in 2024, close to its share of the economy.[51] Government schemes created 2.51 million hectares of irrigation potential through major and medium projects and covered 7 million hectares with micro-irrigation by 2022–23.[53, 54] Yet a satellite and ground-observation study estimates north India lost about 450 cubic kilometres of groundwater from 2002 to 2021, with water tables falling around 1.5 centimetres a year.[39] The depleted north-western wheat and rice belt produces much of India's exportable surplus.
Import exposure:
India is a net exporter of rice, buffalo meat and seafood.[32, 36] The main protein import is pulses: a record 7.344 million tonnes in ,[8] about a fifth of pulse supply[5] and 2–3 per cent of total protein supply.[19]
Pulses come from several suppliers: Australia supplied 1.885 million tonnes, Myanmar 1.050 million, Russia 718,000 and Tanzania 404,000, with further volumes from Brazil, Sudan and Malawi.[8] Cargoes reach both coasts without dependence on a single maritime chokepoint.
Edible oil is a less visible risk to protein production. India imported about 16.3 million tonnes in 2024/25, including palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia through Malacca and soybean oil from South America.[37, 38] Oilseed crushing also produces meal for animal feed, so cheap imported oil can reduce domestic oilseed area and feed supply.
Upstream dependence:
Foreign sources account for 68.6 per cent of fertiliser supply value: 44.5 per cent as feedstock and 24.1 per cent as finished product.[10]
Urea production is about 30.6 million tonnes against consumption of 38.7 million in 2024–25, with imports of 5.6 million tonnes. Although this suggests 79 per cent self-sufficiency, 85 per cent of the gas used in domestic production is imported LNG, reducing effective self-reliance to about 46 per cent of requirement.[10] Qatar supplied 41 per cent of India's LNG imports, while Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were the leading urea suppliers.[10, 12]
Phosphorus and potash are more dependent. Of 9.2 million tonnes of DAP consumed, imports came chiefly from Saudi Arabia, Morocco and China,[10] and China halted phosphate fertiliser exports from December 2025 through August 2026.[64] Domestic rock output was 1.37 million tonnes against 11.95 million imported, while indigenous rock covered only 7 per cent of phosphorus supply; value-chain self-sufficiency in phosphatic and complex fertilisers was 16.5 per cent.[10] India has no viable domestic potash reserves and imported 3.54 million tonnes in 2023; Russia supplied 51 per cent.[10]
Feed is mostly domestic, but the soybean crop fell 14 per cent to 11.03 million tonnes in 2025–26.[40] Soymeal exports nevertheless rose to 334,000 tonnes in October–November 2025, from 241,000 a year earlier.[41] Poultry genetics also rely on imported breeding lines.[20]
India holds equity in overseas fertiliser producers in Oman, Jordan, Senegal, Morocco and Tunisia; Ma'aden also has a long-term agreement to supply over 3 million tonnes of DAP a year.[10] These arrangements diversify access, but do not eliminate reliance on imported inputs.
Access and affordability:
SOFI 2026 estimates that 520.1 million people, 35.5 per cent of Indians, in 2025 at USD 4.11 a day.[17] was 9.8 per cent in 2023–25, compared with 7.8 per cent worldwide in 2025.[17, 18] is more severe: 35.5 per cent of under-fives, based on the 2019–21 NFHS-5 survey and classified as very high by WHO.[42] Food-price inflation has been volatile, most recently 5.32 per cent, against a long-run average of 5.66 per cent.[43]
The National Food Security Act distributes subsidised grain through roughly half a million fair-price shops to about 800 million people.[15, 16, 43, 54] By July 2025, 99.7 per cent of habitations sanctioned under PMGSY-I had all-weather road connections.[44] These systems support physical access, while affordability and nutrition outcomes show who is left behind.
India's public stocks and administered prices kept most of the 2007/08 rice-price spike out of the country: only 10–20 per cent of the world-price increase reached domestic markets.[56, 57] From 2021 to 2023 the rupee fell 11.7 per cent against the dollar while food prices rose 13.9 per cent.[58, 59]
Domestic food prices then kept rising even as world prices fell. Between March 2022 and March 2026, India's food-price index rose 21 per cent while the FAO index fell 19.7 per cent.[59, 60] Retail rice and wheat-flour prices varied only 1.2 and 2.6 per cent respectively across their 2025 high and low.[61] At the INR 4,628 monthly floor wage, a day's pay bought 2.1 kg of chickpeas in August 2026; one kilogram cost about 3.9 hours of work.[61, 62]
Shock endurance:
Central-pool rice and wheat stocks stood at 60.40 million tonnes on 1 April 2026, nearly three times the 21.04-million-tonne buffer requirement.[13, 14] Cereals supply about half of dietary protein, so these reserves also buffer protein supply.[19] India also has broad dietary substitutes and residue-fed smallholder dairy.
Foreign-exchange reserves were USD 725.727 billion in February 2026, falling to USD 682.35 billion by July as the Gulf crisis drew them down.[33, 46] At June's USD 70.84-billion monthly merchandise-import bill, that was about 9.6 months of cover.[46, 47] The fiscal deficit declined to 4.40 per cent of GDP in FY2025–26, but government debt remained high at 81.92 per cent.[48, 49] The National Food Security Act provides an established legal entitlement to grain during a crisis.[15, 16]
The Gulf escalation showed the exposure to imported fertiliser: urea prices rose from USD 484 to about USD 652 per tonne in ten days, and domestic fertiliser plants were assured only 70 per cent of their previous six months' gas consumption.[10] CRISIL estimates a sustained disruption could cut domestic urea output by 10–15 per cent and add INR 200–250 billion to the subsidy bill.[11] A deficient 2026 monsoon and reservoirs at 41 per cent of capacity add to the pressure.[26, 27]
India has also shown it can act quickly: the same grain-delivery system distributed free food through the pandemic, while export restrictions turned rice surpluses into domestic supply during the 2022–24 shocks.[15, 16, 30, 31] The trade-off is that these actions transfer some of the shock to global buyers; India supplies well over a third of traded rice.[36]
Trajectory
Water depletion and imported fertiliser constrain India's outlook. ICRIER recommends diversifying fertiliser sourcing toward Africa, Central Asia and Latin America, expanding overseas phosphate and potash holdings through a proposed fund of at least USD 1 billion, and reforming a subsidy regime that spent INR 1.75 trillion in 2023–24.[10, 35] Bringing urea under the Nutrient Based Subsidy scheme or replacing product subsidies with direct transfers via AgriStack could reduce price distortions and import dependence. Neither reform has been funded or legislated.
Two shifts would improve this outlook: raising nutrient-use efficiency to reduce fertiliser demand, and reversing the pulse-area contraction to close the main production deficit and diversify protein supply.[19, 9] Two would worsen it: a multi-season Gulf disruption translating the 2026 fertiliser price shock into a yield shock, and continued groundwater drawdown in the north-west, converting India's surplus into a deficit over decades rather than seasons.
India produces protein at scale, but depends on imported fertiliser and gas and a depleting aquifer system to sustain it. Grain stocks cannot replace missing potash across several growing seasons.