Dharma Regenerative — India

India built energy sovereignty.
We never asked the same question about food.

The Strait of Hormuz has effectively closed. Fertiliser shipments are stranded. Urea prices are up 40%. Kharif season begins in six weeks. This moment has been coming for fifty years — we just chose not to see it.

Read the full argument →
India's potash dependency
100%
of Muriate of Potash is imported. India produces zero domestically. One chokepoint can hold the entire input at ransom.
Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers · 2025
Live — April 2026 Hormuz shipping down 95% · Urea +40% across South Asia · Indian manufacturers cutting output · Kharif season begins June
India's fertiliser exposure

Four numbers that explain why this crisis was inevitable.

100%
of potash (MOP) imported. No domestic production exists anywhere in India.
Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers · 2025
70%
of urea imports from Gulf nations — Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE.
UNCTAD Rapid Assessment · March 2026
67%
of DAP demand now met by imports — up from 56% just one year ago. The direction is worsening, not improving.
Fertiliser Association of India · 2025
₹1.83L cr
annual fertiliser subsidy — largely subsidising imported inputs. India pays foreign nations to feed its own farmers.
Department of Fertilizers · 2024–25
The consequence chain

One conflict. One strait. Five steps to your food costs rising.

01
Strait closes — LNG prices double
Natural gas is the primary feedstock for urea production. When the Strait of Hormuz closes, Gulf LNG cannot reach global markets. Production costs surge immediately. There is no alternative route for large ammonia carriers.
02
Indian fertiliser factories cut output
IFFCO and other major producers have already reduced urea output as production becomes uneconomical. This is not a forecast — it is happening now, reported by CSIS in March 2026.
03
Prices spike 40% across South Asia
Regional urea spot prices have already risen over 40% since the conflict began. The government subsidy bill will follow — with no mechanism to cap it when import costs are structurally elevated.
04
Kharif planting season begins June
Rice, cotton, soybean — India's critical summer crops — require peak fertiliser application in the weeks immediately ahead. The Hormuz closure could not have been timed worse for Indian agriculture.
05
Farmers apply less. Yields fall. Food costs more.
The downstream humanitarian number is not abstract. The UN has estimated that a prolonged Hormuz closure could push 45 million additional people into hunger. India sits at maximum exposure at every point in this chain.
UN Office for Project Services · April 2026
"The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz can push 45 million more people into hunger and starvation."
Jorge Moreira da Silva
Executive Director
UN Office for Project Services
$7.7B
India's annual net fertiliser import deficit — before this crisis began.
The parallel we missed

India solved this problem once before. For energy.

The logic that drove India's solar revolution applies — with equal force — to food inputs. We simply never applied it.

2010 — Energy sovereignty
Solar was called economically absurd at ₹17 per unit.
India looked at its oil import bill, understood the geopolitical coercibility it created, and committed to an alternative over time. The critics were right about transition costs. They were entirely wrong about the destination. Eighty gigawatts later, the strategic calculus has shifted permanently.
2026 — Food input sovereignty
Regenerative agriculture is at the same inflection point.
The transition yield gap is real — 20 to 30 percent in years one through three. We will not pretend otherwise. Critics cite it constantly. They are right about the transition and wrong about the destination. The math is identical to 2010. The urgency is greater — because you can maintain strategic petroleum reserves. You cannot maintain strategic soil fertility reserves.
Same logic.
Same math.
Same urgency.
Different input.
Our approach

Regenerative agriculture is not an ecological preference. It is a sovereignty strategy.

Every tonne of compost that replaces a tonne of imported DAP is simultaneously a fiscal saving, a strategic risk reduction, and an investment in the land that compounds in value over time rather than depleting it.

Soil as a productive asset
Regeneratively managed soil becomes more productive each season. Soil organic carbon — a measurable proxy for fertility — increases demonstrably within 5 to 10 years of transition. The land appreciates rather than depreciating under input load.
Closed-loop input systems
A properly managed regenerative system generates its own fertility through composting, green manuring, crop rotation, and biological nitrogen fixation. Zero imported potash. Zero Strait of Hormuz exposure. Complete immunity to the crisis unfolding today.
Honest about the transition
ICAR data shows yield dips of 20 to 30 percent in years one through three on chemically-dependent soil. We will not hide this. We are building the agronomic, financial, and market-side support structures to make that transition viable — for smallholders, at scale, in India.
The founder

A supply chain operator who followed the data back to the soil.

R
Rajeev Yadav
Founder
Dharma Naturals · Dharma Regenerative
India & United States
Dharma Naturals
Pure, organic foods rooted in regenerative farming, ethical sourcing, and traditional methods—crafted for health, sustainability, and authenticity.
Dharma Regenerative
Building scalable, regenerative ecosystems across agriculture, supply chains, and living spaces—connecting farmers, markets, and a more sustainable future.

I built a produce supply company. I moved vegetables from farm to fulfilment centre to quick commerce platform — at scale, operationally, with real data on what gets rejected, what degrades, what the platform actually demands versus what the farmer can deliver.

What I found, tracing the supply chain backward, is that the quality problems at the consumer end are soil problems at the origin. Nutrient-depleted produce is not a logistics problem. It is an input problem. And India's input problem — its structural dependence on imported NPK — is a sovereignty problem wearing an agricultural disguise.

The same food system vulnerabilities that exist in India exist in the United States. Different brand names, same structural dependency on external inputs, same long-run exposure to geopolitical supply chain shocks. We are building the fix in both markets because the problem does not have a passport.

The Strait of Hormuz closure is not the cause of this vulnerability. It is the first time the vulnerability has been impossible to ignore. The cause is a fifty-year policy choice to build food production on imported inputs rather than on soil fertility. Dharma Regenerative exists to demonstrate that a commercially viable alternative is possible — not as a niche organic brand, but as a proof of concept for a different input model entirely.

Food sovereignty is
the next frontier.

If you are a farmer, investor, policymaker, buyer, or journalist who sees the same structural problem — we would like to hear from you.

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