Context: Despite achieving food self-sufficiency, India continues to face widespread malnutrition largely due to declining soil health and imbalanced fertiliser use.
Relevance of the topic:
Prelims: Key facts and schemes related to Food security and Soil Health.
Mains: State of Soil Health and its impact.
India’s Progress in Food Security
Once dependent on food imports under the US PL-480 programme in the 1960s, India has today become self-sufficient in food production:
- In FY25, India exported 20.2 million tonnes (MT) of rice in a global market of 61 MT.
- India runs the world’s largest food distribution programme, the PM-Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), providing 5 kg of free rice or wheat per person per month to more than 800 million people.
- The Food Corporation of India holds about 57 MT of rice- the highest stock in 20 years and nearly four times the buffer norm of 13.54 MT as of July 1, 2025.
Poverty has receded significantly:
- The extreme poverty head count (those earning less than $3/day at 2021 PPP) dropped from 27.1% in 2011 to just 5.3% in 2022.
Persistent Challenge of Malnutrition:
- Despite food self-sufficiency, malnutrition remains a major concern. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS 5) (2019-21) reports that :
- 35.5% of children under five years of age are stunted,
- 32.1% are underweight, and
- 19.3% are wasted.
- One critical and often overlooked factor behind malnutrition is the health of soils.
Status of Indian Soils
- Less than 5% of Indian soils have high or sufficient nitrogen (N).
- Only 40% have sufficient phosphate (P).
- Only 32 % have sufficient potash (K).
- Just 20% are sufficient in soil organic carbon (SOC) - a critical component of soil fertility and nutrient absorption
- Our soils also suffer from a deficiency of sulphur, as well as micronutrients like iron, zinc and boron.
Imbalanced Fertiliser Use:
- For example, In Punjab, nitrogen use exceeds recommendations by 61%, while potassium use is short by 89%, and phosphorus use is short by 8%.
- Only 35-40% of Nitrogen from granular urea is absorbed by crops, the rest is either released into the atmosphere as nitrous oxides or leaches into groundwater, contaminating it with nitrates and making it unsafe for consumption.
Impacts of Agriculture in Nutrient-deficient Soils
- Crops grown on nutrient-deficient soils often mirror those deficiencies, leading to a silent but pervasive form of malnutrition in humans. E.g., Deficiency of zinc in soils results in low zinc content in cereals like wheat and rice, which in turn is linked to childhood stunting.
- Imbalanced use of fertilisers leads to soil degradation and suboptimal agricultural productivity.
The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and OCP Nutricrops (Moroccan state-owned fertiliser production company) have committed to collaborating to improve soil health in India. The collaboration aims to develop, implement, and scale region-specific, data-driven soil nutrition solutions that enhance crop productivity while improving their nutritional profile.
Way Forward
To restore soil health and improve both crop and human nutrition, India needs a paradigm shift-
- Shift from indiscriminate fertiliser use to science-based soil nutrition management.
- Promote rigorous soil testing to guide fertiliser application.
- Implement customised fertilisation strategies aligned with specific soil and crop needs.
- Link to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - Improving soil nutrition advances SDG-2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG-13 (Climate Action).