Govt conducting pilots with Agristack to link land, fertiliser use, crops

Agriculture Secretary Rajat Kumar Mishra said that in Haryana, an experiment was conducted to connect land, fertiliser usage and crops grown using Agristack, and it showed remarkable results

The government is conducting pilots to use technological platforms, such as Agristack, to connect land, fertiliser usage, and crops to fix the quantum of crop nutrients ideally required, Union Agriculture Secretary Rajat Kumar Mishra said on Tuesday.

 

Mishra’s remarks put the debate around price control aside for now.

 

Delivering special remarks during a roundtable on ‘Healing Soils in India’, organised by ICRIER, Mishra said the government is conducting seven pilots in four states where 60 per cent matching of land, fertiliser usage and crops grown has happened.

 

Once this matching reaches 80 per cent, the government will start connecting the vital statistics to discourage excess use of urea.

 

On the question of co-tenants, which is vital for delivering any tangible results on curbing excess urea usage, Mishra said this was also being accommodated so that there is no friction.

 

He said government data showed that 60 per cent of fertiliser usage is by those who do not have land in their own names.

 

In Haryana, Mishra said an experiment was conducted to connect land, fertiliser usage and crops grown using Agristack, and it showed remarkable results.

 

“In less than four months, 102,000 tonnes of urea were saved compared with the same period last year, while in the case of DAP, the saving amounted to over 72,000 tonnes,” he said.

 

Highlighting the excess usage of urea, he said that in 2024-25, government analysis shows that 65 per cent of farmers in India bought five to seven bags of urea in a year, which is reasonable, while the remaining 35 per cent farmers accounted for the maximum load of urea usage.

 

“But, having said that, when you see that landholdings are so small and with such small holdings farmers need to feed their families and meet other requirements, there is no scope for reasonableness,” Mishra said.

 

He said when farmers have limited resources and go to markets to get crop nutrients, they naturally opt for the cheapest one, which in this case is urea.

 

Mishra said that, additionally, the government has embarked on a massive campaign in 163 out of the 730 districts in the country that have high fertiliser usage. In these districts, average urea consumption is around 100,000 tonnes. “This means that these districts consume around 2.2 million bags of urea every year, and farmers know that this is unreasonable,” Mishra said.

 

He said the Centre has also launched an initiative called ‘Dharti Mata Nigrani Samitis’ across the country and has already formed around 156,000 such committees to make farmers aware of the ill-effects of excessive fertiliser usage.

 

NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand, who also addressed the seminar, said the country needs to seriously relook at the ideal NPK ratio, which is 4:2:1, as crop yields have grown manifold since the time these ratios were fixed.