India’s Soil Is Sending a Warning: Why Integrated Nutrient Management Is the Way Forward

For decades, Indian agriculture has delivered impressive gains in food production, helping feed a growing population. But this success has come at a largely invisible cost — the gradual exhaustion of the soil itself. As climate stress intensifies and returns to chemical-intensive farming diminish, India is reaching the limits of a “more fertiliser, more yield” model. Ensuring long-term food security now requires a decisive shift towards Integrated Nutrient Management (INM), an approach that treats soil as a living system rather than an inert input.

The crisis beneath our feet

Indian farming is dominated by small and marginal landholdings and a heavy dependence on nitrogenous fertilisers, particularly urea. Over time, imbalanced nutrient application and repeated monocropping have degraded soil health across large parts of the country.

The most visible symptom is the rise of multi-nutrient deficiencies. Soils are no longer short only of nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium, but also of secondary and micronutrients such as sulphur, zinc and boron. As soil quality deteriorates, factor productivity declines — farmers must apply more fertiliser just to maintain earlier yield levels. This pushes up costs and leaves crops increasingly vulnerable to erratic rainfall and droughts, now more frequent under Indian climatic conditions.

What Integrated Nutrient Management actually means

Integrated Nutrient Management is often misunderstood as a rejection of chemical fertilisers. It is not. INM advocates their balanced and efficient use, combined with organic and biological inputs, to restore and sustain soil fertility.

In practice, INM involves:

• Chemical fertilisers applied in precise doses based on soil needs.
• Organic manures such as farmyard manure, compost, vermicompost and green manures.
• Bio-fertilisers like Rhizobium, Azotobacter and mycorrhizae that fix nitrogen or mobilise phosphorus.
• Recycling crop residues to rebuild soil organic matter.

The objective is not substitution alone, but synergy — ensuring that nutrients are available to crops while improving the soil’s long-term capacity to supply them.

The three pillars of soil health

INM works because it strengthens all three pillars of soil health — physical, chemical and biological.

Physically, the addition of organic matter improves soil structure and water-holding capacity. In rainfed regions, this can be the difference between crop survival and failure during dry spells.

Chemically, balanced nutrient application helps maintain optimal soil pH and prevents nutrients from being locked up or washed away. This improves nutrient-use efficiency and reduces waste.

Biologically, INM revitalises soil life. Microorganisms and earthworms — often called the soil’s “tiny engineers” — play a central role in nutrient cycling and sustaining productivity, especially in intensive systems like rice–wheat and sugarcane belts.

From policy to practice: what farmers can do

Translating INM from research plots to farmers’ fields requires practical, location-specific strategies. Programmes such as the Soil Health Card Scheme have laid the groundwork by promoting fertiliser application based on soil testing rather than guesswork.

Key practices include split application of nitrogen aligned with crop growth stages, and the use of slow-release inputs such as neem-coated urea. Simple tools like the Leaf Colour Chart in rice allow farmers to visually assess nitrogen needs and apply urea only when required, cutting costs and reducing runoff.

Crop diversification also matters. Integrating legumes into cropping systems naturally enhances nitrogen fixation, benefiting subsequent crops and improving overall system productivity.

Economic and agronomic payoffs

Evidence from long-term field experiments across India shows that integrated use of chemical fertilisers and organic inputs sustains higher yields than chemical fertilisers alone.

For farmers, the gains are concrete:

• Lower input costs through partial replacement of expensive fertilisers with on-farm organic resources.
• Greater climate resilience as improved soil structure supports deeper roots and better moisture retention.
• Improved crop quality through correction of micronutrient deficiencies.

These benefits are particularly significant for smallholders, for whom rising fertiliser costs and climate shocks pose the greatest risks.

Why INM matters beyond the farm

At a national level, Integrated Nutrient Management aligns with India’s sustainability goals. By reducing nutrient losses through leaching and volatilisation, INM lowers water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions linked to fertiliser use.

More fundamentally, it challenges the extractive mindset that treats soil as a resource to be mined rather than nurtured. India cannot indefinitely draw down soil fertility to support production targets. Without course correction, today’s gains risk becoming tomorrow’s constraints.

Feeding the future means feeding the soil

India’s food security debate has long focused on yields, procurement and prices. Soil health has remained the quiet variable in the background. Integrated Nutrient Management brings it to the centre of the conversation.

Treating soil as a living system — one that requires a balanced, sustained diet — is not a return to the past, but a science-backed strategy for the future. If Indian agriculture is to remain productive, resilient and profitable in the decades ahead, restoring soil vitality through INM is no longer optional. It is foundational to feeding the nation.