India’s farmers are finding it increasingly harder to get higher yields from their fields because of worsening stress on soil quality. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has noted that nearly a third (32 percent) of India’s land area is degraded while a quarter (25 percent) is undergoing desertification. Moreover, the country loses 5.3 billion tons of soil every year due to water and wind erosion according to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
Soil stress, with the impact of climate change only exacerbating it, is acting as a drag on farmland productivity, driving up input costs and weighing on farm incomes. However, most crucially, it is threatening India’s hard-won food security, with the country needing its farmlands to produce more food than they ever must feed the world’s largest and yet still growing population.
Fortunately, there is hope. India’s farmlands have not yet crossed the point of no return. The government, too, has actioned numerous initiatives over the years aimed at mitigating soil degradation from watershed management projects and the promotion of resource-responsible precision farming techniques to the soil health card program.
In the Global Soil Conference held in 2024, our honorable ministers and government representatives emphasized the need to address concerns surrounding soil health, in a sign that the highest echelons of government have taken note of the issue.
In fact, there is a National Soil Policy reportedly in the works. The draft National Soil Policy aims to provide an “overarching framework for protection, restoration, and sustainable management” of soils in India, involving scientists and farmers working together to develop practical solutions that can be implemented at the farm level.
There are a number of practices that can be actioned — and many already have — to preserve and even renew soil health. These include conservation agricultural practices like zero tillage, which are already being practiced to great success in countries like Argentina and Brazil, or regenerative and natural farming practices.
However, with soil renewal being a slow process and so much of our land area already degraded, we also need to equip our farmers to enhance productivity from already stressed farmlands, protecting their incomes in the shorter term, even as the process of soil renewal plays out.
Soil Supplements
Soil supplements and nutrients that can make farming on stressed land less resourceful and water intensive without further damaging the soil, could hold the key.
As an example, UPL’s Zeba is a naturally-derived, starch-based, super-absorbent product that increases the water-holding capacity of the soil, improves nutrient use efficiency in the crop’s root zone, and has a positive effect on the soil microbiome, thereby maintaining and even improving soil health.
Its impact has been tangible — Zeba was used across 1.2 lakh acres of farmland across India in 2023 and saved 72 billion liters of water. It also led to a 25% reduction in fertilizer use while delivering savings of INR 1,500 per acre on electricity and INR 1,000 per acre on labor. In total, Zeba has earned the average farmer an additional income of INR 22,000+ per hectare on an additional spend of less than INR 5,000.
Zeba, to put it simply, has been a game changer. There are several other products out on the market today that are moving the goalposts in a similar way.
Promoted on a national scale, they could prove to be revolutionary. And that’s what Indian agriculture needs — another revolution. The Green Revolution transformed our country from a food-deficient to a food-secure and even a food-surplus country. The Rainbow Revolution cemented those gains. In order to avoid squandering those gains we now need a new revolution for a new age. We need a Soil Revolution.
Ashish Dobhal, CEO of UPL Sustainable Agri Solutions (UPL SAS)
