The P and K nutrients supplied by non-urea fertilisers are as vital as N supplied by urea. Yet, India is facing an increasing imbalance in the NPK use ratio
For decades, farmers in India have been resorting to indiscriminate and excessive use of chemical fertilisers such as nitrogen (N), phosphate (P) and potash (K) besides a host of secondary and micro-nutrients. This is leading to deterioration in soil health, an adverse impact on the environment and imperiling public health. The mother soil is the repository of these nutrients and the precise quantum in any given location depends on their stock to begin with, i.e. when farmers started cultivating the land (say 100 years ago or even earlier), addition from application of chemical fertilisers (or organic manure) and their uptake by the crops grown. By conducting a soil analysis, it should be possible to find out the stock of each nutrient viz. “N”, “P”, “K” and so on.
Juxtaposed with the requirement for growing a particular crop, the farmer can deduce how much of each nutrient needs to be supplied externally albeit from chemical fertilisers (or not to be applied at all, a scenario when the soil itself is in a position to meet all the requirements for uptake by the crops). But, this procedure is rarely followed, which causes a serious mismatch, leading to either deficient or excessive use of a given nutrient.
There is excessive use of urea — a dominant source of ‘N’ vis-à-vis complex fertilisers such as diammonium phosphate (DAP) the main source of ‘P’ and muriate of potash (MOP), the main source of ‘K’. This has led to an increasing imbalance in the NPK use ratio. On an all-India basis, currently this ratio is 6.7:2.4:1 against an ideal 4:2:1 with the attendant adverse effect on crop yield, health of soil and humans. This has even pushed some States on the brink of a chemical epidemic. For instance, in Punjab, where per hectare fertiliser use is higher than the national average, chemicals have found their way into the soil, ground water, the food chain and are identified as a key factor responsible for cancer in the State. To arrest this trend, in February 2015, the Modi Government launched the National Soil Health Programme (NSHP) under which it distributed soil health cards (SHCs) to over 140 million farmers. Growers are encouraged to test their soil every two years in State-run mobile and village-station laboratories. The laboratories analyse the soil on various nutrients including secondary and micro-nutrients and then the SHCs offer customised recommendations on fertiliser use.
According to a study by the National Productivity Council (NPC) which was carried out in 76 districts, spanning 19 States and covered 1,700 farmers, growers have cut the use of chemical fertilisers by up to 10 per cent. Further, productivity has gone up between five per cent and six per cent on assessed crops, resulting in higher farm incomes. Another study by the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (NIAEM) covering 3,184 farmers cultivating cotton, paddy and soybean across 199 villages in 16 States, showed that agriculturalists who applied fertilisers and nutrients as per recommendations written on their SHCs reduced cultivation costs by four to 10 per cent and increased their net incomes between 30 to 40 per cent.
Considering that the study covers a fraction of farmers, one wonders whether these results are truly representative of all cultivators in the States concerned. Assuming that this is the case and even if the reduction in use of chemical fertilisers by up to 10 per cent (as per the NPC study) was entirely in urea use, this is nowhere near the target of a 50 per cent cut set by the Government for itself.
In the backdrop of the World Soil Day on December 5, 2017, while delivering his Mann Ki Baat radio address, the Prime Minister said, “Can our farmers take a pledge to reduce urea use by half by 2022? If, they promise to use less urea in agriculture, the fertility of the land will increase and the lives of farmers will start improving.”
This is not to suggest that the NSHP can’t play a potent role in guiding farmers towards a balanced fertiliser use. While, the Government should continue with the scheme, it needs to attend to an overarching factor that lies at the root of the increasing imbalance. This has to do primarily with the policy environment with regard to the pricing and availability of each of the fertiliser types. To make fertilisers affordable to farmers, the Centre controls their maximum retail price (MRP) at a low level unrelated to their cost of production and distribution, which is way higher. The excess of cost over MRP is reimbursed to the manufacturer as subsidy. In the case of urea, the subsidy varies from unit to unit and is administered under the New Pricing Scheme (NPS) whereas for decontrolled complex fertilisers, MOP and single superphosphate (SSP), a “uniform” subsidy fixed on per nutrient basis is given to all manufacturers under the Nutrient Based Scheme (NBS). The cost of transportation (it includes primary movement by rail from the plant and secondary movement from the unloading rake point by road to the retailer) is reimbursed to urea manufacturers under a uniform freight policy. On the other hand, manufacturers of decontrolled complex fertilisers like MOP (excluding SSP) get reimbursement of freight cost only towards primary movement on the basis of actual rail freight, as per the Railway receipts.
Thus, the manufacturers/importers of decontrolled complex fertilisers, MOP and SSP receive a stepmotherly treatment vis-à-vis manufacturers of “controlled” urea. In case of complex ones (MOP/SSP), even as the Government normally keeps the subsidy unchanged, increase in the cost leads to an ever-increasing MRP. In sharp contrast, it keeps the MRP of urea at a low level (the current price Rs 5,360 per tonne is more or less the same as it was nearly 20 years ago) even as all escalations in cost are absorbed by increasing subsidy.
This results in disproportionately low MRP of urea vis-a-vis that of complex fertilisers, prompting farmers to use more of the former and less of the latter. The discrimination against complex fertilisers and MOP is also evident in their not getting freight subsidy on secondary movement to retail point (manufacturers of SSP don’t even get primary freight for movement from plant to railhead) as also in denial of natural gas, the feedstock used for making of ammonia — an intermediate used in manufacture of complex fertilisers — to their plants. In short, in almost every aspect, be it subsidy support, reimbursement of movement cost or feedstock supply — non-urea fertilisers have been at the receiving end. Their woes are further exacerbated by high dependence on imports (100 per cent in K and nearly 90 per cent in P) and resultant exploitation by global cartels by way of charging a high price. This discrimination has persisted for close to three decades following their decontrol in 1992, even as urea remained under control with disproportionately-high subsidy all through. The P and K nutrients supplied by non-urea fertilisers are as important as N supplied by urea. Merely because, the Government decided to decontrol non-urea fertilisers even while retaining urea under control, does not render the former any less important. Yet, it is this flawed perception in the minds of our policymakers that has contributed to the present mess. The SHC can, at best, guide the farmers on proper fertiliser use but it can do little to stem the opposite impact of flawed policies.
These glaring anomalies can be addressed by dismantling controls on MRP and the existing system of routing subsidy through manufacturers for both urea and non-urea fertilisers. Instead, give subsidy directly to farmers via the direct benefit transfer mode.
With this, the grower will be empowered in the true sense and will be free to use subsidy for buying fertiliser types needed by the soil that would be based on the recommendation embedded in the SHC. There could not be a better way of reining in excess fertiliser use and reducing the imbalance in the NPK ratio. Modi should use his political capital to crack the whip on this long-pending reform.
(The writer is a New Delhi-based policy analyst)
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