India solved the wrong oil problem first

India is the world's top sunflower oil buyer, and Black Sea attacks have sent it hunting across South America. Shipments from Russia and Ukraine are running weeks late, and prices are climbing.

The substitutes are squeezed too. Indonesia is diverting more palm oil into biodiesel, and China's record soybean buying keeps the soy complex tight. A weak monsoon has thinned India's harvest. 

But the country has two oil problems, the crude it burns for fuel and the cooking oil it imports for the kitchen. It threw its capital at the fuel one first, reaching 20% ethanol blending years ahead of target. But feeding those distilleries takes land, and some of that land is coming from oilseeds. So the fix for one oil may gradually worsen the other.

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