Somewhere on the far side of the world, a soybean field is going thirsty, and the price of the cooking oil in your kitchen is quietly creeping up. For four episodes we followed El Niño across India's own fields. This is the one where it follows your groceries home.
It was never just our monsoon
El Niño has a cruel sense of geography: it dries out the very places that grow the world's food — Southeast Asia (most of the world's palm oil), Brazil (a huge share of soybeans, sugar and coffee), Australia's wheat belt — at the same time. Most of the world can shrug. India cannot, because of one thing on that map we can't grow nearly enough of: cooking oil.
The one thing we cannot grow
The average Indian gets through ~24 kg of edible oil a year, and most of it never grew here. India is the largest edible-oil buyer on the planet, importing more than half of what it uses — palm from Indonesia and Malaysia, soybean oil from Argentina and Brazil, sunflower from Russia and Ukraine. That's almost exactly the list of places El Niño is drying out. We can ride out a weak monsoon for crops we grow; cooking oil we buy from the very farms El Niño is squeezing, with no home-grown cushion.
When the seed fails abroad
It begins with rain that doesn't arrive — a palm estate in Indonesia sets less fruit, a soybean field in Brazil comes up thin — and the world has far less cooking oil to sell. Brazil is the country to watch: one dry spell there can thin soybeans, tighten sugar and lift coffee all at once. The UN's global edible-oil price index (100 = a normal year) sits near 185, almost double normal — and because India is the biggest buyer, that's not an index we read about, it's the bill on our doormat. The journey in four steps: El Niño dries a harvest abroad → the world has less to sell → India buys at that price → your oil and biscuits cost more.
The hidden tax — the rupee
Every shipload is paid for in dollars, not rupees, so the price at home is the world price times the exchange rate — and the rupee slid all year, from ~90 at the start to a record low near 97 in May, hovering ~95 now. That slide works like a tax on everything imported. Even on a day the world price falls, a weaker rupee can eat the whole discount. Put them together and you have the squeeze of 2026: El Niño shoving the world price up, and a sinking rupee multiplying every shove on the way in. It's also why the RBI can't simply cut rates — a cut sinks the rupee further and imports even more inflation. (To be clear: "oil" here is the edible oil you cook with, not crude, which is a separate market and actually cooling.)
Who pays when cooking oil costs more
The squeezed — oil buyers who ship in palm and soy and sell it back as food, soap and shampoo. AWL Agri Business (Fortune, in ~1 in 3 kitchens) and Patanjali Foods refine imported palm/soy, so dearer oil thins margins first; Marico (palm in hair oils), HUL, Godrej Consumer, Britannia and Nestlé all carry oil-linked costs. The cushioned — firms that crush home-grown oilseeds (e.g. Gokul Agro): when imported oil turns dear, their local oil looks cheaper and buyers drift their way. The wildcard is held abroad: Indonesia supplies most of India's palm, so a single decision in Jakarta can move your shelf overnight — when it banned palm exports in 2022, HUL, Britannia and Marico fell as much as 6% in a day.
The bottom line
El Niño was never just our monsoon's problem. The same warm ocean starving our fields is lifting the price of the cooking oil, sugar and soy we must buy — and a weak rupee turns every price tag into more rupees at home. Some inflation a good harvest can cure; this kind arrives by ship, and the only defence is to see it coming. Across the five episodes, the chain to watch: El Niño's strength (ongoing) → the monsoon (late season) → food inflation (monthly CPI) → the RBI's call (each meeting) → cooking oil and the rupee (daily).
