Mount Abu, Rajasthan: India meets only 44% of its domestic demand for edible oil and spends more than $20 billion a year on imports, a bill that is bound to increase with the war in West Asia disrupting global supply chains and India’s foreign currency reserves under strain.Already, IndiaSpend’s Food Price Watch has recorded significant year-on-year price increases across different edible oils. Based on the prices of packed oil on May 30, 2026, groundnut oil was up 7% from 2025, mustard oil 12%, palm oil 9%, soya oil 9%, sunflower oil 15% and vanaspati 4%.Two years ago, the government launched a mission to increase oilseeds production by nearly 80% by the end of this decade, but that assumes a jump in productivity that needs urgent support in the form of farmer outreach, seeds resistant to climatic changes and pests, and an overhaul of the procurement and value addition chains, experts say.Under the National Mission on Edible Oils, the government has rolled out minimum support prices (MSP) for the procurement of oilseeds, and tariffs to discourage imports and encourage domestic production of edible oils. This includes rapeseed-mustard, groundnut, soybean, sunflower, sesamum, safflower, niger, linseed and palm. While the latter two aren’t covered by the MSP programme, fresh fruit bunches of palm are covered by a baseline price.To cater to the growing demand for oilseeds, this programme now targets increasing the oilseed area coverage from 29 million hectares (ha) in 2022-23 to 33 million hectares by 2030-31, and the primary oilseed production from 39 million tonnes to 69.7 million tonnes in the same period.Targeting a 79% increase in production from a 14% increase in acreage presumes a huge jump in productivity, which is up against “a combination of agro-climatic, technological and socio-economic factors, asides genetic limitations”, Ravi Mathur, director of the ICAR-Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research, told IndiaSpend.“With farmers tending to allocate better land, irrigation, and inputs to cereals and cash crops, oilseeds are often cultivated in residual moisture conditions, on relatively poor soils and in less-favoured production regions,” he said.In the last three decades, oilseeds acreage across India has increased by more than half, but north and south India saw a drop of 54% and 37%, respectively, offset by a tripling of area under oilseeds in central India and roughly doubling in both west and northeast India.Low household consumptionIndia’s per capita consumption of edible oil is widely stated as 19.7 kg per year. However, this consumption spans domestic and industrial uses of oilseeds.The 2022-23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey shows that in rural India, the per capita consumption of edible oils is 10.58 kg per year, and in urban India, it is 11.78 kg per year. These figures also include non-food uses in homes such as for lighting diyas, Dattatraya Mahabaleshwar Hegde, former director of the ICAR-Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research, pointed out.In 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi thrice asked his fellow citizens to cut down on their consumption of edible oil for health reasons, in January, February and August. He pointed to rising obesity to suggest that a 10% cut in edible oil consumption can “bring a big change in your health”.Last month, the Prime Minister repeated his appeal, as part of a list of measures including asking citizens to help conserve foreign exchange reserves by cutting down on purchasing gold and spending on foreign travel, and a shift to public transport, in the face of oil shortages.The Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Nutrition has recommended restricting visible fat intake to 30 grams per person per day for a 2,000 kcal diet, which translates to 10.95 kg per year. By that measure, the average Indian family is not exceeding the recommended upper limit.Instead of creating fear around cooking oils, dietician Archana Batra proposed public messaging that encourages mindful oil use, healthier cooking methods, choosing quality oils and reducing the consumption of fried and processed foods. But domestic consumption is only one part of the picture.Hegde pointed out the growing consumption of oilseeds by industry is increasingly siphoning what is available for domestic use. “About 35% of the edible oil available in the country is used for non-food uses such as soaps and cosmetics, biofuels, lubricants & greases, paints & coatings, etc.,” he said. “But we lack a clear picture of such uses.”World over, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates only 24% of oilseeds and other oil crop produce is consumed as food, with the rest used as animal feed, to make biofuel and for other industrial and non-food uses. However, developments in West Asia pushing up prices of fuel and growing interest in biofuel as a means to ease fuel prices present cause for concern.Sub-optimal production conditionsIndia accounts for 15-20% of the global oilseeds acreage, but contributes only 6-7% of the world’s vegetable oil production.Barring castor, which is not edible but in which India enjoys the highest productivity, the country’s productivity of all the other edible oilseeds is low, varying from a sixth of the highest productivity recorded globally for that crop to a third.“Countries reporting the highest yields of oilseeds such as China, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, and the USA often cultivate these crops under highly optimised production systems, with superior irrigation infrastructure assuring moisture availability, precision agriculture, intensive input use and strong extension support,” said Mathur.Essentially, “their reported yields represent production under near-optimal conditions with higher crop maturity period, as most of these crops are taken as a single crop in a year, whereas Indian averages reflect performance across highly diverse agro-ecological regions, including drought-prone areas.”Therefore, improving the productivity of edible oilseeds hinges largely on supporting farmers with the necessary inputs and providing them irrigation technologies.Photo: IndiaSpend.A dearth of support and outreachConsider the case of soybean. Telangana, which has India’s highest productivity of 1,644 kg per hectare, has barely 150,000 hectares under cultivation by farmers who have access to inputs like fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides, etc., explained Kunwar Harendra Singh, director of the ICAR National Soybean Research Institute, Indore.In contrast, “in Madhya Pradesh, where soybean is grown on about 5 million hectares by large as well as small farmers, the average productivity falls because smaller farmers don’t have access to the same inputs,” Singh continued. “Supporting farmers with inputs is vital to increase productivity.”India’s low oilseed productivity can also be attributed to 70% of the oilseeds cropping area being rain-fed.Soybean, for instance, is primarily a kharif crop grown during the monsoon. Farmers are advised to irrigate their fields only if the monsoon is delayed or sees gaps. Then, “farmers who lack irrigation facilities see their crop productivity drop,” said Singh.In a policy paper published in 2025, Akshata Nayak, assistant professor, Agricultural Development and Rural Transformation Centre (ADRTC), Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, has recommended extending programmes like the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana to oilseed-growing regions. Additionally, providing micro-irrigation technologies like drip and sprinkler systems could improve water use efficiency in oilseed cultivation.Research such as this recent study published in the Multidisciplinary Science Journal confirms a strong positive association between groundnut production and irrigation, with irrigation levels accounting for approximately half of the production variance. Studies also confirm the positive impact of drip irrigation and flood irrigation techniques on groundnut production, and their ability to save water.The challenge is, even when farmers have access to water, such as in the case of soybean in Madhya Pradesh, they don’t irrigate oilseeds, pointed out Hegde, alluding to the need for more intensive outreach.To create awareness of Good Agricultural Practices and technologies that help increase productivity, a March 2026 Parliamentary Committee report on the production and availability of oilseeds and pulses in the country proposed opening at least one Krishi Vigyan Kendra in every district of the country such that 10 million new farmers are trained annually over the next five years. Until today, many districts don’t have such centres.Support prices, market linkages keyStrengthening the Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA) Scheme, by expanding the MSP for oilseeds from 25% to 100% of the production, is another recommendation of the aforementioned Parliamentary Committee report. Essentially, all the country’s produce should be procured by the government both to protect foreign exchange reserves as well as shield farmers from global price volatility.IndiaSpend has asked the agricultural ministry if it proposes to adopt this suggestion. We will update this story when we receive a reply.Experts agree that appropriate government interventions to protect oilseed farmers from market fluctuations are missing.“We didn’t see timely government action when mustard prices fell below the MSP in 2023,” said Hegde.“Keeping prices up is vital to reassure farmers to continue to grow oilseeds and encourage new farmers,” he said. “The timeliness and scale of intervention in the eventuality of downward price movement needs to improve.”The Parliamentary Committee has also recommended the opening of new procurement centres in backward districts and remote locations with poor transport and digital connectivity, and introducing separate MSP for organic produce.With price volatility and inadequate post-harvest infrastructure leading to distress sales and losses of up to 10% for oilseeds, beyond support prices, instituting ways to add value to farm produce can play a key role in incentivising farmers to adopt these crops.For instance, in Hodal in Haryana’s Palwal district, a farmer producer organisation (FPO) is procuring mustard seeds from farmers to make mustard oil, which is being sold locally.“We help farmers with inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides and fungicides, which if they didn’t get from us, would compel many to go to money lenders,” said Dinesh Chauhan, director of Hodal Farmers’ Producer Company Limited.Creating awareness of the potential of post-harvesting processing of oilseeds among representatives of FPOs and assisting them to establish oil mills would help boost rural enterprise.Setting up local oilseed processing units, which is also a recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee, especially for backward areas of the country, can help reduce post-harvest losses and improve rural employment, Nayak pointed out.Scaling up research, disseminating outcomes essentialGroundnut productivity in India is, on average, at 2,067 kg per hectare (kg/ha), 13% of Uzbekistan’s 15,519 kg/ha, the highest in the world. Other oilseeds trail the world’s highest productivity rates too, as we explained above.Such productivity lags “are primarily due to low adoption of high-yielding varieties and inadequate seed replacement rates across many states”, according to the aforementioned Parliamentary Committee report.Nayak suggested that oilseed production is constrained by the lack of location-specific high-yielding varieties, in addition to other reasons such as high cultivation costs, untimely input availability, low and fluctuating market prices and the predominance of rain-fed farming.“Groundnut failures are often caused by climate variability, fungal and viral diseases and the continued use of low-quality recycled seeds, which reduce yield and increase disease susceptibility,” she said, while emphasising that the development and adoption of certified, location-specific improved varieties, along with proper agronomic practices, is essential for enhancing productivity and resilience.The Parliamentary Committee report advises the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to aim to release region-specific new varieties building on the varieties it has released since 2014, by 2028.Given that climatic variability such as erratic rainfall and heatwaves are reducing oilseeds by up to 20%, as the Committee noted, climate resilience is now a major focus of oilseed research programmes across ICAR institutions.The ICAR-Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research is screening large germplasm collections maintained by national and international programmes to identify novel sources of tolerance to drought, heat, salinity, and emerging pests and diseases.Thereafter, breeding programmes incorporate specialised traits that help efficient water use, deeper rooting systems, early vigour, tolerance to terminal drought and high-temperature stress, resistance to major diseases and insect pests.Research is also focused on conservation agriculture, moisture conservation techniques, precision nutrient management, integrated pest management, and weather-based advisories to improve productivity under climatic uncertainty.Now the focus is to ensure these improved varieties and production technologies “reach farmers at the necessary scale for quality area expansion”, said Mathur. “Making quality seeds available, balanced nutrient management and timely plant protection support and mechanisation will contribute to boost farm productivity in the coming years.”Quality area expansions presume the availability of high quality seeds as well as cultivation expansion, which Nayak emphasised must extend to non-traditional areas to increase national oilseed production.To increase the cultivated area, the Parliamentary Committee proposed cultivating oilseeds in unused rice fields after the rabi season, as the residual soil moisture would make for a better outcome.Another suggestion is promoting intercropping, such as growing soybean with pigeon pea in Maharashtra and Central India, or mustard with wheat in Rajasthan, by subsidising the relevant seeds.Establishing a well-equipped seed hub in every district by 2030 to produce both breeder and foundation seeds, targeting 100% seeds replacement rates for notified varieties less than five years old; setting an upper price for seeds; and legislating a new Seeds Bill have also been recommended to protect farmers, especially small and marginal farmers’ income and seed sovereignty rights.Charu Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.This story was first published on IndiaSpend, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit.