The protein system
The region has 536 million people, and Pakistan and Bangladesh account for 81 per cent of them.[72] Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis and the reliance of three smaller states on imports make the region very uneven.
There is enough protein in total, but too little of it comes from animal foods. Supply runs from 62.58 grams per person per day in Afghanistan to 81.74 in Nepal and 97.41 in the Maldives, with Pakistan at 73.39 and Bangladesh at 68.[1] Pakistanis get 32.55 grams of animal protein a day and Maldivians 53.03, against 8.72 in Afghanistan.[2]
Two industries carry the region. Pakistan's dairy herd produced 72.34 million tonnes of milk in , and livestock make up 63.6 per cent of farm output and 14.97 per cent of GDP.[14, 15] Bangladesh produced 5 million tonnes of fish in 2023-24, 2.978 million tonnes of it from inland fish farms.[10, 11] FAO ranks Bangladesh among the world's top five fish-farming countries and second in inland fishing,[12, 13] and fish supply about 60 per cent of the animal protein Bangladeshis eat.[11] Across the seven members, fish farms produced about 3.19 million tonnes and wild fisheries about 3.09 million tonnes in 2023.[8, 9]
The gaps are in cereals, pulses and feed. Bangladesh grows 1.05 million tonnes of wheat, about 14 per cent of the 7.7 million tonnes it uses.[29] Pakistan's 2026 wheat harvest was 29.61 million tonnes, leaving an estimated shortfall of 3.5 million tonnes; USDA had projected 27.5 million tonnes and 1.7 million tonnes of imports.[16, 18] Bhutan grew 34.2 per cent of its cereals in 2024.[51] The Maldives imports about 90 per cent of its food and has just 27 square kilometres of farmland.[53] Nepal's food import bill reached Rs434.26 billion in FY2025/26.[49]
Durable domestic capacity:
Only parts of the region produce well. Pakistan produces more milk per person than India, and Bangladesh's pond fish farms have become a global industry while the country stayed self-sufficient in rice, with a forecast 37.4 million tonnes.[30] Sri Lanka became self-sufficient in chicken and eggs by 2024, after importing eggs in 2022 for the first time since 1962,[48] and its fisheries supply over half its animal protein.[45]
The limits are just as clear. Sri Lankan milk covers 43 per cent of daily need.[46] ranges from 5.3 per cent in Nepal and 10.4 per cent in Bangladesh to 16.5 per cent in Pakistan and 28.1 per cent in Afghanistan.[7] Afghanistan's farming is in crisis after four years of drought and the failure of the 2025 rain-fed wheat crop. 17.4 million people, 36 per cent of the population, are projected to face crisis-level hunger or worse, 4.7 million of them at emergency level.[56] In the first half of 2026, 885,400 people were forced back from Iran and Pakistan.[57] Afghanistan has 8.4 per cent of the region's people, so its crisis weighs on the whole region.
Resource headroom:
Water is already stretched in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which drew 110 per cent and 90.79 per cent of their internal renewable freshwater in 2022.[4, 5] Pakistan's Indus river system supplies 96 per cent of its freshwater, about 80 per cent of it from outside the country, and its reservoirs hold only about 30 days of supply.[62] Across the region, the population has grown faster than cropland, and cropland per person fell 31.8 per cent between 2000 and 2024.[80, 82]
Bangladesh has the opposite problem: plenty of water but little land. It draws only 5.72 per cent of its water and has 0.05 hectares of arable land per person,[4, 6] and that land is shrinking. The area affected by salt grew 26.7 per cent between 1973 and 2009, from 833,450 to 1,056,190 hectares,[64] and salt levels rose a further 8 to 12 per cent in parts of Satkhira and Khulna between 2024 and 2025.[65]
Wild fish are at or beyond their limits. The World Bank finds Bangladesh's main commercial fishing grounds, 14,600 square kilometres or 12 per cent of its sea shelf, overfished, with silver pomfret down 58 per cent since 2000 and Indian salmon down 63 per cent.[63] Pakistan's sea catch has been flat at about 0.51 million tonnes since 2020,[9] with 60 to 90 per cent of stocks fully fished or overfished.[71] Sri Lanka's catch fell from 382,266 tonnes in 2020 to 338,161 in 2023.[9]
Farm credit is scarce. Only in Sri Lanka do farms get more bank lending than their share of the economy. In Bangladesh they get about two-fifths of it and in Pakistan about a fifth.[81] Pakistan's Green Pakistan Initiative shows the limits of water in practice. Since it began in Cholistan in February 2025, two investors given 50,000 acres each have pulled out or not started farming.[83, 84] On one farm, groundwater salinity more than doubled after a failed wheat crop. The farms still running mostly grow fodder for export, while the Indus flow at Kotri is 65 per cent below its 1970s level.[83, 84]
The region's diet needs relatively little feed. Bangladesh feeds 34.22 per cent of its cereals to animals, Pakistan 17.43 per cent, Sri Lanka 7.82 per cent and Afghanistan 3.45 per cent.[3] Bangladesh produces its 2.978 million tonnes of farmed fish on very little land.[11] Nepal and Bhutan have abundant water, at 6,670 and 99,883 cubic metres per person,[5] but are short of land and workers. Nepal's arable land fell 23.4 per cent between 2000 and 2024, an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 farm workers a day leave for jobs abroad, and about 100,000 hectares of state-owned farmland lie abandoned.[85] Bhutan's arable land fell 35.2 per cent over the same period, and farm lending relative to farming's share of the economy more than halved from a 2017 peak.[80, 81] Plentiful water is of little use without the land and people to farm it.
Import exposure:
Staple protein is mostly home-grown, so imports matter most for foods that are hard to replace. Pakistan imported about 1.32 million tonnes of pulses in FY2025, near 80 per cent of what it ate, for close to USD 1 billion, as domestic output fell about 40 per cent.[66] It also imported around 2 million tonnes of soybeans for crushing after lifting its ban on GM imports in November 2024.[67] Bangladesh imports 6.7 to 7.4 million tonnes of wheat,[29] 1.5 million tonnes of maize[30] and 2.4 million tonnes of soybeans[31] a year, and grows 175,000 tonnes of lentils against a need of 600,000 to 700,000.[34] Sri Lanka buys about 100,000 tonnes of milk powder a year for over USD 400 million,[46] licenses maize imports to meet a feed need of 600,000 tonnes,[47] and spent USD 90.3 million on rice imports in the first five months of 2026.[42]
The three smallest members rely on imports by necessity. Food makes up 21.24 per cent of the Maldives' merchandise imports, and staples come in under quota.[53] India supplied 90 to 95 per cent of Bhutan's farm imports in 2024.[51] Nepal imported Rs39.53 billion of rice and paddy, Rs25.77 billion of live animals, poultry and dairy, and Rs34.03 billion of oil cake and maize for feed in FY2025/26.[49]
Reliance on one supplier makes this worse. Nepal and Bhutan buy almost all their imported rice from India,[70] which is also the fallback supplier for Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. India banned wheat exports in May 2022 and non-basmati white rice exports from July 2023 to September 2024, and it does not sell to Pakistan at any price. India puts its own market first: over a third of Indians still .[59] Afghanistan faces the problem from the other side. It is landlocked and relies on wheat by land from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, just as Kazakhstan's surplus for export falls to 7.5 million tonnes in 2026/27.[57]
Upstream dependence:
Bangladesh needs 2.6 million tonnes of urea a year and makes 800,000 to 1,000,000 tonnes, down from 1.9 million tonnes and 80 per cent of need.[25] Gas shortages shut four of its five state urea plants and the KAFCO plant from 4 March 2026, leaving one plant making 2,800 tonnes a day. Two attempts to buy replacement supplies then failed: the first tender drew no bids and the second drew 50,000 tonnes against 200,000 sought.[25] It needs 1.5 to 1.6 million tonnes of DAP fertiliser a year. It makes 100,000 tonnes and buys 600,000 tonnes under a Saudi contract, whose March 2026 shipment was cancelled.[26, 27] All potash is imported, with 859,000 tonnes planned for 2026.[26]
Pakistan can make all its own urea, but only with gas it does not have. It imported 6.6 million tonnes of LNG in 2025, almost all from Qatar, and 35 cargoes due in 2026 were cancelled before the crisis.[24] It needs 1.3 to 2.3 million tonnes of DAP a year and has one plant that can make 650,000 tonnes. In the October 2025 to March 2026 season it imported 271,000 tonnes and produced 381,000.[19, 20]
Prices moved fast. About 35 per cent of world urea exports and 20 to 30 per cent of all fertiliser exports normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz.[95] Urea passed USD 850 a tonne in April 2026, 80 per cent above February and the highest since April 2022. Potash was 17 per cent dearer than a year earlier, and the World Bank expects its fertiliser index to rise more than 30 per cent across 2026.[35] FAO warns that planting cannot wait, so the harm to yields will show in late 2026 and 2027.[36] In Bangladesh, urea rose from USD 484 to 690 a tonne between February and early April, and LNG shipping rates rose 650 per cent.[28]
Sri Lanka has already seen what happens without fertiliser. Its April 2021 ban on chemical fertiliser and pesticide imports cut rice yields by about 30 per cent, forced USD 450 million of rice imports into a country that had been self-sufficient, and raised rice prices by about 50 per cent.[39, 40] The subsidy that replaced the ban cost LKR 37 billion in 2025.[41]
One funded change helps a little. In September 2025, Pakistan set aside domestic gas for three fertiliser plants, confirmed by the cabinet in December. That secures supply for the roughly 32 per cent of urea capacity, over two million tonnes a year, that previously had no assured gas.[21] No phosphate rock or potash is mined anywhere in the region, and with the Indus Waters Treaty suspended, Pakistan's water supply depends on another country's decisions.[61]
Access and affordability:
In 2024, 51.5 per cent of people could not afford a healthy diet across the six countries with figures, home to 91.6 per cent of the region's people. Rates ranged from under 5 per cent in Bhutan and the Maldives to 64.4 per cent in Pakistan.[60] , a broad measure of child health with many causes beyond diet, affected about 32 per cent of children across the seven countries.[73] Afghanistan has 28.1 per cent undernourishment and 44.6 per cent child stunting.[56, 73]
Prices have swung wildly. Sri Lankan food inflation went from 94.9 per cent in September 2022 to minus 5.2 per cent a year later,[76] and Pakistani food inflation from 48.7 per cent in May 2023 to minus 5.1 per cent in March 2025.[74] Bangladesh[75] and Nepal[77] saw smaller swings. Getting food to people is hard in several places: conflict and displacement in Afghanistan,[57] scattered islands reachable only by sea in the Maldives,[53] and cyclones and salt on the coasts of Bangladesh[65] and Sri Lanka.[41]
In Pakistan and Bangladesh, support prices, state buying and changes to import duties soften world price movements.[86, 87] Currency falls matter more. From 2021 to 2023 the Pakistani rupee lost about 42 per cent of its value against the dollar while food prices rose 72.4 per cent. The Sri Lankan rupee lost about 39 per cent as food prices rose 77.5 per cent, and the Bangladeshi taka about 20 per cent as food prices rose 19.1 per cent.[88, 89]
Prices did not come down when world prices fell. In March 2026, food prices were 70.6 per cent above March 2022 in Pakistan, 51.6 per cent in Sri Lanka, 42.0 per cent in Bangladesh and 18.0 per cent in Nepal, while the FAO Food Price Index was 19.7 per cent lower.[89, 90] Afghan wheat prices follow harvests and conflict, because imports come overland.[57] The Maldives imports about 90 per cent of its food by sea, so world prices reach it more directly.[53] Prices swing most within the year where both the currency and the harvest move. In 2025, Karachi wheat flour varied by 56.3 per cent between May and December, against 17.8 per cent for Colombo rice, 13.7 per cent in Kathmandu and 6.4 per cent for Bangladeshi rice.[91]
In 2024 the monthly minimum wage was PKR 37,000 in Pakistan, LKR 17,500 in Sri Lanka and NPR 17,300 in Nepal.[92] A day's minimum wage buys 3.8 kg of chicken or 4.7 kg of red lentils in Islamabad at late-August 2026 prices.[93] In Colombo it buys 0.5 kg of chicken or 2.0 kg of lentils, and in Kathmandu 1.7 kg of chicken or 3.3 kg of lentils.[94]
Shock endurance:
Bangladesh is best placed. It held USD 32.93 billion in reserves in June 2026, up from USD 26.74 billion a year earlier, about five months of imports.[32] It also held 1.52 million tonnes of public food stocks, planned to buy 2.29 million tonnes of rice,[33] and had 1.68 million tonnes of fertiliser in stock in March 2026, judged enough to last to May or June.[28] Nepal holds USD 23.55 billion, 21.8 months of imports, built on money sent home by workers abroad,[50] but that cannot raise its own food output.
Pakistan, home to 48 per cent of the region's people, holds USD 22.67 billion in reserves, 2.54 months of imports, under an IMF programme whose third review released a further USD 1.32 billion in May 2026.[22, 23] It is closing PASSCO, the agency that holds the 1.7 million tonne federal wheat reserve. In the same year, Punjab bought only 480,000 tonnes of wheat against a target of three million, 5.1 million tonnes of wheat went unaccounted for, and the cabinet decided to import a million tonnes for about USD 1 billion.[16, 17] Sri Lanka's reserves fell 6.2 per cent in June 2026 to USD 6.45 billion.[43] It has restructured over 92 per cent of its foreign debt, but the risk of new debt trouble is still judged high,[44] and its strategic paddy reserve is 49,612 tonnes.[41] The Maldives' usable reserves fell from USD 113.6 million to USD 73 million between the end of April and the end of May 2026, barely a month of imports, after a bond repayment.[54, 55] Afghanistan has no buffer of its own. WFP reaches 2.1 million people a month with about 3,700 tonnes of food, needs USD 350 million to October 2026, and has no food aid planned for the months ahead.[57, 58]
Support for households varies just as widely. Pakistan's Ehsaas emergency cash programme reached 13.2 million people with PKR 160.4 billion by July 2020, during the COVID-19 shock.[78] In Bangladesh, WFP-supported programmes reached around 4 million people in 2024.[79] Afghanistan has no social protection system of its own that could scale up. Sri Lanka has recovered from the fertiliser ban, with rice output forecast at 3.45 million tonnes,[41] but shipping costs for grain and oilseeds rose 30 per cent after 28 February 2026.[37]
Trajectory
Three changes would help most. The first is home-made nitrogen fertiliser. Pakistan's gas allocation shows how, and Bangladesh needs the same: with one plant working and output far below need, its urea supply could fail entirely. The second is phosphate and potash from routes that avoid Hormuz. Bangladesh began talks with Egyptian, Moroccan, Chinese and Emirati suppliers in April 2026,[27] a start rather than a solution, and China had already halted phosphate fertiliser exports until August.[96] The third is fish feed. Bangladesh's fish farms are the region's best source of protein, and their feed is made from rice and wheat bran, maize, soybean meal, mustard oil cake, fishmeal, and meat and bone meal. About half of those ingredients are imported, meat and bone meal from Australia and Paraguay among them.[68, 97, 98]
Water works against all three. Pakistan uses more water than it renews, its reservoirs hold 30 days of supply, and the treaty that governs four-fifths of its water is suspended. Bangladesh has its own version. Boro, the dry-season rice crop, supplied 54 per cent of the country's rice in 2018-19 and is grown on pumped groundwater. The monsoon refills those aquifers partly from rivers that rise in other countries, and in the Barind tract and western Ganges floodplain it does not replace all that is pumped out.[99] Bhutan aims to be self-sufficient in food by 2029,[52] and the Maldives is building climate-proof farms on 26 northern islands.[53] Both are worthwhile but small. How long the fertiliser shock lasts, one harvest or two, will decide the near-term outcome.
Country notes
Pakistan. Large milk output[14] cannot make up for severe water stress,[62] thin [22] and the closure of its federal grain reserve agency.[16, 17]
Bangladesh. Self-sufficient in rice and a leader in fish farming, but short of farmland, and its urea plants keep shutting for lack of gas.[6, 11, 25]
Sri Lanka. Chicken and egg output recovered after the fertiliser ban, but rice is still below pre-2021 levels and milk covers 43 per cent of need.[39, 41, 46, 48]
Nepal. Money from workers abroad gives it 22 months of import cover, but farm workers are leaving and it relies almost entirely on India for imported rice.[50, 70, 85]
Bhutan. Imports come easily from India, but it grows little of its own cereals and its farmland is shrinking, though egg and dairy output is strong.[51, 80]
Maldives. Fish give it the region's highest protein supply, but almost all other food is imported and usable reserves cover about a month of imports.[53, 54, 55]
Afghanistan. Drought, forced returns, high undernourishment and no planned food aid are deepening hardship.[56, 57, 58, 73]