Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
be fertile, 2% of tropical soil should be made up of organic carbon: right
now in India most of the soil comprises only 0.05% organic carbon.
Despite significant growth in agriculture during the last four
decades in India, most of our important soil-based production systems
are showing signs of fatigue. All India consumption of fertilizers (N +P 2
O 5
+ K 2
O) over the years has increased from 1.98 million tonnes in 1970
to 26.8 million tonnes during 2015-16 (Fertilizer Association of India).
Meanwhile, the partial factor productivity of fertilizers is declining in
intensive cropping systems in India. The partial factor productivity of
fertilizers during the last three and half decades showed a declining trend
from 15 kg food grains/kg NPK fertilizer in 1970 to 5 kg food grains/kg NPK
fertilizer in 2005. In the hurry for higher production, no serious attention
was given to long-term soil quality and sustained high productivity. As
a consequence, the annual compound growth rate of major crops has
declined from 3.36% in 1981-85 to 0.11% in 2001-05. Such gloomy trends
were also registered in the case of pulses and oilseeds, while cotton even
exhibited a negative growth rate. 17
Even though there are soil test and crop-based fertilizer
recommendations available, farmers continue to follow their own ways of
applying fertilizers in expectation of higher yields – which contributes to
nutrient imbalances in soil and emergence of multi-nutrient deficiencies.
Most of the existing fertilizer recommendations are also based on an
individual crop’s requirements for a particular season only, which fail to
address the nutrient budgets for a cropping system. Biological nutrient
fixations in inter/mixed crop soil systems (e.g. cereal + legume) are also
not considered while calculating the fertilizer nutrient needs.
Unfortunately, most of the research experiments conducted in
agricultural universities, including long-term experiments on soil
fertility, focus mostly on assessing the soil’s nutrient status alone
(chemical property), neglecting the impact and interaction of physical
and biological properties on sustaining the productivity of the soil. It is to
be noted that integrated nutrient management approaches consider only
126