At the time, it hoped to extend a contract with Canadian supplier Canpotex beyond the end of September.

India is a leading fertilizer importer to support its vast agriculture sector, which employs about half of its 1.4 billion people and accounts for nearly 15 per cent of its economy.

Canada is a key supplier of potash to India. Indian companies last year signed a memorandum of understanding with Canpotex to buy up to 1.5 million tonnes of potash a year for three years, starting from 2023.

In April, Canpotex said it had agreed on a supply contract with Indian Potash for shipments through Sept. 30.

“We don’t expect any impact on our potash imports from Canada. Canpotex’s deals with Indian companies are commercial contracts. So far, it is a business as usual for us,” said Indian Potash Ltd. managing director P.S. Gahlaut.

“[The] Canadians have already signalled their willingness to extend the contract regardless of political upheavals.”

Reuters was not immediately able to contact Canpotex.

Ties between India and Canada deteriorated sharply after New Delhi and Ottawa each expelled one of the other’s diplomats in a dispute over the June murder of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia.

India depends entirely on imports to meet its annual need for about four million tonnes of muriate of potash (MOP), the government said in a statement last year. India also buys the nutrient from Belarus, Russia, Israel and Jordan.

Indian companies imported about 550,000 tonnes of potash between April and September this year, about the same as last year in the same period, Gahlaut said.

The post Indian Potash sees no Canada supply hit appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Indian Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters the idea was still fluid, but New Delhi had held preliminary conversations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, have discussed the issue twice, Pradhan said.

“We are discussing various models,” Pradhan added.

India imports about four-fifths of its oil needs, with bulk of that supplied from the Middle East. A global supply glut has oil-rich countries there struggling to boost sales.

India is also the world’s biggest rice and wheat producer after China and has large stocks of the staples.

Countries in the Middle East import food in large quantities as the region has less arable land and water.

The cost of food imports there could double to US$70 billion in 20 years, as climate change hits crop yields and the population rises, an analyst at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas told the Thomson Reuters Foundation last year.

On Feb. 1, rice stocks at the state-run Food Corporation of India were 16.2 million tonnes, against a target of 7.6 million tonnes. Wheat stocks totaled 20.3 million tonnes, higher than the government-set target of 13.8 million.

“They can buy food from here and store in India or in their countries; and we can buy oil from there and store in our strategic storage,” Pradhan said.

Pradhan said such a deal would help Indian farmers secure a new market for their produce, mainly rice and wheat.

The mechanism envisaged by India will be different from the United Nations-designed oil-for-food program, in which Iraq was allowed between 1996 and 2003 to sell oil in exchange for goods that met basic humanitarian needs, including food and medicines.

Pradhan said India had offered the UAE a part of its Mangalore strategic reserves to store oil. Under the arrangement being proposed by the Indians, the Gulf state would be allowed to use about a third of that oil for trade, while keeping the rest for India to use as strategic reserves.

India will complete the first phase of its strategic reserve to store 39 million barrels by May and later this year begin work on the second phase which will have a capacity to hold 91.6 million barrels, Pradhan said.

— Nidhi Verma is a senior correspondent with Reuters’ New Delhi bureau. Additional reporting for Reuters by Mayank Bhardwaj in New Delhi.

The post India, Middle East countries in talks on oil-for-food scheme appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.