Why India’s Food Security Depends on Healing Its Soils

For decades, Indian agriculture has delivered impressive gains in food production, helping feed a growing population. But this success has come with a largely invisible cost: the slow exhaustion of soil health. As climate change intensifies rainfall variability and droughts, and as yields begin to plateau despite rising input use, it is increasingly clear that the “more fertiliser is better” model has reached its limits. To sustain productivity and farmer incomes, India must shift decisively towards Integrated Nutrient Management (INM)—a science-backed yet ecologically grounded approach to nourishing soils.

The quiet crisis beneath Indian farms

Indian agriculture is dominated by small and marginal landholdings, with farmers heavily dependent on nitrogen-rich chemical fertilisers. Over time, imbalanced nutrient use—especially excessive urea—combined with continuous monocropping has degraded soil structure and fertility.

This has resulted in widespread “multi-nutrient deficiencies”. Large tracts of farmland now lack secondary and micronutrients such as sulphur, zinc and boron. As soils weaken, factor productivity declines: farmers must apply ever-higher quantities of fertiliser just to maintain earlier yield levels. The outcome is rising cultivation costs and greater vulnerability to climatic shocks like erratic monsoons and prolonged dry spells.

What Integrated Nutrient Management really means

Integrated Nutrient Management does not reject chemical fertilisers. Instead, it seeks to use them more efficiently by combining them with organic and biological inputs. INM treats soil as a living system that requires a balanced nutrient “diet”, rather than a passive medium to be chemically fed.

In practice, INM brings together:

• Chemical fertilisers, applied in precise quantities based on soil requirements.
• Organic manures such as farmyard manure, compost, vermicompost and green manures.
• Bio-fertilisers, including nitrogen-fixing and phosphorus-solubilising microbes like Rhizobium and Azotobacter.
• Crop residues, returned to the soil instead of being burnt or discarded.

Why soil health has three inseparable dimensions

The strength of INM lies in its impact on the three pillars of soil health—physical, chemical and biological.

Physically, the addition of organic matter improves soil structure and water-holding capacity. For farmers in rainfed regions, this can be the difference between crop survival and failure during dry spells. Chemically, INM helps maintain balanced pH levels and ensures that nutrients remain available to plant roots rather than being locked in the soil or lost through runoff.

Biologically, INM revitalises microbial life and earthworm populations—the invisible workforce responsible for nutrient cycling. These organisms are especially critical in intensive cropping systems such as rice–wheat and sugarcane belts, where soils are under constant pressure.

From policy to practice: making INM work on farms

Translating INM from research plots to farmers’ fields requires location-specific management rather than blanket prescriptions. National programmes such as the Soil Health Card Scheme have begun this shift by promoting fertiliser use based on soil testing rather than guesswork.

On the ground, simple but effective practices make a difference. Split application of nitrogen, timed to key crop growth stages, improves uptake and reduces losses. Slow-release fertilisers such as Neem-coated urea help curb excessive nitrogen use. In rice cultivation, tools like the Leaf Colour Chart allow farmers to visually assess crop nitrogen status before applying urea.

Integrating legumes into cropping systems further enhances soil nitrogen through biological fixation, benefiting both the immediate crop and subsequent plantings.

Economic gains and resilience at the field level

Evidence from long-term field experiments across India shows that farms adopting integrated use of fertilisers and organic inputs sustain higher yields over time than those relying solely on chemicals.

For farmers, the advantages are practical and immediate. Input costs fall as on-farm organic resources partially substitute expensive fertilisers. Improved root growth and soil tilth make crops more resilient to drought stress. Balanced nutrition, especially with micronutrients like zinc and iron, improves both yields and produce quality—an increasingly important factor for market access.

Why INM matters for India’s future

Beyond individual farms, Integrated Nutrient Management aligns closely with India’s environmental and climate goals. By reducing nutrient losses through leaching and volatilisation, INM lowers water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions linked to fertiliser overuse.

Most importantly, it offers a way out of extractive agriculture. India cannot indefinitely “mine” its soils without jeopardising food security. INM provides a scalable, farmer-centric pathway to restore soil vitality while maintaining productivity.

Treating soil not as inert dirt but as a living system is no longer optional. It is central to feeding the nation sustainably—today and for generations to come.