Theme: Agriculture | Why India must rethink its fertiliser and farming policies

Welcome to Business Lines, State of the Economy Podcast, where you will find insight, analysis and the story behind the numbers. Hi all, welcome to Business Lines, State of the Economy Podcast on Agriculture. India's soil degradation is a critical issue, leading to significant economic losses and threatening poor security and sustainable development. Nearly 57% of India's geographical area or 187.8 million hectares are estimated to have degraded since the 1960s. Oil faces problems of water erosion, acidification, flooding, salinity and alkalization besides depression of nutrients. This affects the yield of crops, faces input across leading to loss of agriculture in agriculture. Animal losses due to degradation of soil is spent at over Rs 2500 crore. Addressing soil degradation requires a multi-faceted approach, combining traditional wisdom with modern techniques, investing in sustainable land management practices and ensuring policy coherence across various sectors. To tell us more about this, we have with us Mr. Manin Das Singh Nayar, founder and CEO of the Seth Guru. Welcome to Business Lines, State of the Economy Podcast on Agriculture, Mr. Nayar. Can you tell us the crisis created by India's soil degradation and the long-term economic loss? To understand this, I would talk in brief about what soil degradation exactly is, where it has reached right now, and how it is affecting our entire ecosystem of agriculture in India. So, soil degradation started after the movement in 1960s when we had to use the chemical fertilizers to increase our yield. But we actually used them in an excessive manner and started deputing the soil health. And where we converted our entire green movement into a chemical movement in the country in order to get more and more yield. And also do agriculture in the easiest manner without actually putting the kind of efforts which were needed to be put in. So, all in all, our soil, which was inherently a very rich soil from North Kashmir to Down South Kanagumari, our organic carbon in the soil was as high as 2 to 3 percent. And the natural nutrient content was very, very high for us to be able to do agriculture in a very natural manner. But when we started using the chemical fertilizers and chemical like DAP and Urea and the soil started depleting. The intent of using chemical fertilizers is that the pest and insects get attracted. And when these pest and insect get attracted, then we have to further use chemical insecticides and chemical pesticides to control them. All in all, it became a vicious circle where we got ourselves stuck in a way that by the time we were in 90s, where in 60s a farmer was using one stack of DAP and two stacks of Urea, one equal of land. By 90s, we had reached a level where from one stack of Urea DAP, we started using two or three stacks. And from two or three stacks of Urea, we started using four or five stacks. Now, when this thing happened, the farmer got into the DAP trap and overall got stuck in that. This reduced the organic carbon in the soil by almost 1 1/2 percent. It was in 1985 that the fertilizer control order was made. This is the book under which all the ingredients that you can put in the soil are detailed out by the government of India, Minister of Agriculture. But somehow we were not able to control the excessive use, which kept on continuing. And in the name of green revolution, we simply forgot the nutrient side, the quality side, the soil maintenance, the regenerative farming. And many other aspects that could make the soil healthy while we could produce more. And today, where we have reached is that very sadly, the organic carbon in the soil has become 0.6 to 0.9 percent. And that means that if we continue the same way of agriculture for next 10 or 15 years, we can reach a point of organic carbon reaching 0.3 to 0.4 percent, which actually means that the soil is no more good for agriculture. So we are actually sitting on a very alarming health crisis and we are not noticing that this has brought not only health issues to our soil and what we are eating as Indians, but it has also brought a very huge economic hit on our entire economy. How I'll give you a simple data that around 2014 when Mr Modi came into power, the spend that was being done on chemical fertilizers to give the DAP, Urea and few other things to farmer that subsidized cost was around 42,000 crores annually. Over a period of last 11 years, the raw material cost internationally of all these chemical based raw material for DAP, Urea and everything has increased so much that today that subsidy has increased to 2,000, 45,000 crores a year. And this is such a high payload that we are taking as a country with the current GDP and economy that we have that we have literally become a country where we are spending to 1/2 lakh crores on subsidizing chemicals, which in turn are deteriorating the soil, depletion the nutrient content in the food that we eat and also resulting in very huge bills of medical health and the kinds of lives that we are losing to bad health conditions in the country, especially in the young generations. So overall it's become a loss from all sides. So how could India go about with the regeneration of the soil? It's not that India has not taken steps to put a check on this but they have certainly not been enough. So as a country we have introduced organic food, organic certifications and organic kind of a movement. Now we have to understand one thing that coming from one side highly chemicalized conventional way of agriculture and on the other side falling something grown in this condition as organic is not going to happen. They are two extremes of the same world. So rather than promoting organic agriculture there is something in between the two of chemical based and organic which can be a safe food category, a health food category which should be promoted as per the quality of agriculture that one is doing in his field. So it's something like either a student in a class is getting 90% plus or he is getting 40% plus. There is nobody in between who is getting a first division or a distinction. This should not be the way. So we should rate the fields in different categories not only organic. Also our rating systems is very theoretical. It should be brought to practical use and moreover you give any kind of certifications it's fine. But if a farmer today it any part of India is practicing organic putting in extra efforts taking the risk practicing natural farming taking the risk is growing something which is a better produce good quality food. He is not getting any incentive for. He is not able to sell that in the market better than conventional chemical grown food. He is not able to get better value of that. So why should he do that? It's a big question. So one is to make different standards of naturally grown food and it should not be one organic it should be two three layers before that. Second is to make the certification process more practical and not theoretical. And third is to give market linkage to this farmer who is actually putting in this effort and after that not getting anything right now but he should get good value. So he should get market linkage and he should become a preferred farmer. This field should be marked this preferred field where agriculture is happening. If you are able to do these three or four things properly then we can actually get to better ways of farming and get to better ways of life. for our farmers and also consumers. What sort of market link incentives can be given for natural and residue feed from? So just like there is a substance called MSP in our country for various grains, flour, and other things. When a farmer chooses to grow good quality food, he should be given a minimum base price for it. There should be a separate market for naturally grown produce, just like we have conventional Mondays. Or maybe in these conventional Mondays only, there are some specific areas allocated for naturally grown food, which is expensive than the regular stuff. Then today we have access to IT, we have access to internet. Consumers are all buying through home delivery services. We should integrate the delivery providers on one side and good quality suppliers on the other side so that the growers get good price and the sellers get good quality that they can actually give to consumers. Apart from that, it is very important for country to roll out a model of low cost food testing so that the consumers can actually figure out what they're eating, just like today, we can get a machine of say, 5,000 rupees, which can test our milk while we are at home. Similarly, something similar should be there, where we can test the food, grains, vegetables that we are buying from the market to see, how much residue is there and how much quality is there in these items that we are consuming and we are giving to our children. So we are a country of masses and we have so much of population that to do that at a scale and very, very doable prices for the consumers is not a difficult task, but we should have intention to do that and form a plan on it. So that is what is needed to be done. - What is the role of waste to resource innovations in building soil health? - That's a very good question, Mr. Subramani. See, what we call waste, see there are two kinds of waste if you primarily want to divide it. One is the waste that is being generated in cities, which is called municipal solid waste. Now, the segregation doesn't happen and everything gets mixed. So if you are to make the fertilizer or manure or compost from this waste, it is definitely not going to be a good quality compost or manure because it is mixed with all kind of toxins and others waste like plastic, paper, glass and whatnot. And we spend a lot in the cities to collect this waste and put it to dump it and then process it in whichever way we are. On the other hand, we are an agricultural country. Around 69% of our population is still in agricultural business. All the farm residue that comes out if properly handled by the government and converted to agri-residue banks from where processors can buy this and convert it into organic manure and other substances of biograin ports. Then within years, we will see that we don't even need that kind of chemical fertilizers being imported from outside to do agriculture, everything will become self-sufficient. So this is one thing that needs to be done to convert the so-called waste, first of all, we should start calling it residue, not waste. And to useful substances in rural areas that will give some income to the farmers who are reducing that and that will give a lot of incentive to the one who will buy it and process it, make it into a product. And then it will ultimately figure out in reconstructive farming where it is going to go regenerative farming where it is going to go back into the fields. And that is how the entire cycle will be made. And when we do this, even the crop burning issues and things like that can be taken care of. What are the investment and policy requirements for scaling up sustainable agricultural? See, first of all, we need to revise our fertilizer control order because it was written in way back in 1985. And from then till now, it's been 40 years we have been depleting the soil, infusing what all kind of chemicals into it. Now to grow good quality vegetables or fruits or grains or flour, on that soil is a very next to impossible task. If we are to do it with the bioagreen puts as they were defined in 1985. For example, our organic manure in the country is today defined as 0.5% N 0.5% P 0.5% K and 14% organic carbon. But ideally, it should not be like that. If you go to Scandinavian countries, if you go to Philippines and a lot of countries who are doing pretty well in natural farming, adopting natural farming processes, you will see that the NPK totality should not be 1.5% it should be 4% plus to be able to regenerate the soil and still give results as good as the chemicals. So all those things at policy level needs to be checked, they need to be implemented. And we must make sure one thing, that what organic manure is being sold in the market should be properly licensed and properly manufactured with all the conditions taken care of. You will be surprised Mr. Subrimani that today, 85% or 90% organic manure, which is sold in the market, is not even licensed. And nobody is there to check what is being sold as organic manure to everyone. So these kind of things are very important to be brought in the system. Thank you very much for your very insightful views, Mr. Nair. I hope the listeners would have benefited from these views. If we meet in a next episode, this is Subrimani signing off. Bye.