WHY INDIA’S SOIL IS GASPING FOR AIR

Cheap urea was meant to help farmers. Instead, it is hollowing out farms and damaging soils

- Sayantan Bera

Excess urea applied on farms is not absorbed by plants and is released as nitrous oxide, a toxic greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 272 times that of CO2.

(PTI)

A few years back, a fertilizer manufacturer from India carried out an internal survey of farmers in the 40+ age group. A stark finding was that most farmers felt they were not going to bequeath a worthy asset, the plot of land on which they farm, to the next generation.

So why is farm land not a worthy asset anymore? Because of a vicious cycle. Sustaining a family on earnings from a small plot of land is a daunting task. Crop prices and profitability is low, so farmers have little surplus left to invest in the farm, say, to restore soil health and improve crop productivity. Meanwhile, recurring climate shocks such as a drought or a heatwave is an additional risk.

Nearly half of India's workforce is employed in the farm sector which contributes about 15% to its national income. Given the significance of the agriculture sector, can higher public investments, in the form of research, precision equipment, irrigation support and insurance, help alleviate this pain? The budget presented last month throws up some interesting numbers.

In 2025-26, the fertilizer subsidy bill alone is estimated to cost the federal government a staggering ₹1.9 trillion. This is far higher than the entire budget for agriculture (including livestock and fisheries), at ₹1.5 trillion. The government will spend ₹1.3 trillion just on urea subsidy. An inevitable outcome is that little money is left for research, insurance support, investments in agriculture related infrastructure or price support for farmers.