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The Chart below shows worldwide growth in fertilizer
use. Notice India’s 54 percent increase in fertilizer use
over the last ten years.
 
Chart below shows India’s wheat output. The red bar highlights the last
ten years (where India's fertilizer use increase 54 percent). The green bar
highlights the start of India’s “green revolution”.
Why is India using so much more fertilizer without any real increase in
production? See article below.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Green Revolution
in India Wilts as Subsidies Backfire.
FEBRUARY 23, 2010
Green Revolution in India Wilts as Subsidies Backfire
By GEETA ANAND
SOHIAN, India—India's Green Revolution is withering.
In the 1970s, India dramatically increased food production, finally allowing
this giant country to feed itself. But government efforts to continue that
miracle by encouraging farmers to use fertilizers have backfired,
forcing the country to expand its reliance on imported food.
Popularized during the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, fertilizers
helped boost crop yields and transformed India into a nation that could feed
itself. But now their overuse is degrading the farmland. WSJ's
Geeta Anand reports.
India has been providing farmers with heavily subsidized fertilizer for more
than three decades. The overuse of one type—urea—is so
degrading the soil that yields on some crops are falling and import levels
are rising. So are food prices, which jumped 19% last year. The
country now produces less rice per hectare than its far poorer neighbors:
Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
…
Farmers spread the rice-size urea granules by hand or from tractors. They pay
so little for it that in some areas they use many times the amount
recommended by scientists, throwing off the chemistry of the soil,
according to multiple studies by Indian agricultural experts.
Like humans, plants need balanced diets to thrive. Too much urea
oversaturates plants with nitrogen without replenishing other nutrients that
are vitally important, including phosphorus, potassium, sulfur,
magnesium and calcium.
…
As the soil's fertility has declined, farmers under pressure to
increase output have spread even more urea on their land.
Kamaljit Singh is a 55-year-old farmer in the town of Marauli Kalan in the
state of Punjab, the breadbasket of India. He says farmers feel stuck. "The
soil health is deteriorating, but we don't know how to make it
better," he says. "As the fertility of the soil is declining,
more fertilizer is required."
…
[Before India’s “Green
Revolution”]
In the early years after India gained independence in 1947, the country
couldn't even dream of feeding its population. Importing food wasn't possible
because India lacked the cash to pay. India relied on food donated by the
U.S. government.
[India’s “Green Revolution” begins
in 1967]
In 1967, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imported 18,000 tons of hybrid
wheat seeds from Mexico. The effect was miraculous. The wheat
harvest that year was so bountiful that grain overflowed storage
facilities.
Those seeds required chemical fertilizers to maximize yield. ...
…
[India’s “Green Revolution” today]
In the northern state of Punjab, Bhupinder Singh, a turbaned, gray-bearded
55-year-old farmer, stood barefoot in his wheat field in December and pointed
to the corner where he had just spread a 110-pound bag of urea.
"Without the urea, my crop looks sick," he said,
picking up a few stalks of the young wheat crop and twirling them in his
fingers. "The soil is getting weaker and weaker over the last 10
to 15 years. We need more and more urea to get the same
yield."
Mr. Singh farms 10 acres in Sohian, a town about 25 miles from the industrial
city of Ludhiana. He said his yields of rice have fallen to three tons per
acre, from 3.3 tons five years ago. By using twice as much urea,
he's been able to squeeze a little higher yield of wheat from the
soil—two tons per acre, versus 1.7 tons five years ago.
He said both the wheat and rice harvests should be bigger, considering that
he's using so much more urea today than he did five years ago. Adding
urea doesn't have the effect it did in the past, he said, but it's so
cheap that it's better than adding nothing at all.
…
"The future is not good here," he said, shaking his head.
Balvir Singh, an agriculture development officer for Punjab state, says it is
as if farmers have become addicted to urea.
"One farmer sees another's field looking greener, so he adds more
urea," he says. "A farmer will become bankrupt, but he will
not stop using urea."
Deteriorating soil health leading to desertification in India
Caritas.org reports about desertification
in India.
Desertification in India
…
Half the land in India is now affected by desertification and
this impairs the ability of land to support life. It is particularly
devastating because of its self-reinforcing nature.
The causes of desertification are extensive cultivation of one crop, use
of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, shifting cultivation without adequate
period of recovery, industrial and mining activities, overgrazing, logging
and illegal felling, forest fires and unsustainable water management.
…
Vegetation plays an essential role in protecting the soil, especially
trees and shrubs, because their long life and capacity to develop
powerful root systems assure protection against soil erosion. Their
disappearance can considerably increase the vulnerability of the land to turn
into a wasteland.
Gentledude.blogspot.com reports about Desertification
In South India.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Desertification
In South India
…
Kannekal and Bommanahal are like any other village in South India 150
years ago. A fertile soil that yielded two crops a year, abundant rainfall,
and plentiful of grass for the livestock. Centuries ago wars have been
fought for the fertile lands. But Hagari, the river that flows by the
villages had severe floods for a couple of years. And with the floods came
sand. The sand dunes spread across the area pretty quickly, thanks to strong
winds in the area. Thus started the process of desertification. Soon rainfall
decreased in the area and the sand dunes started spreading quickly. The
inhabitants of these villages continued with indiscriminate use of water and
instead of taking steps to conserve water, used up even more water for
irrigation using bore wells. This resulted in an even faster spreading of
sand dunes. Now thousands of acres of land is covered by these sand
dunes.
Now look at what happened with India’s
population since the Green Revolution began.
Seems like India has two choices:
1) Switch to more sustainable farming methods and trying to feed twice the
population with pre-“green revolution” grain production levels.
2) Continue “green revolution” farming methods and watch
deteriorating soil health and desertification slowly eat away at grain
production.
Both of these choices involve a lot of people not having food any more. Seems
India is somewhat screwed.
Eric de Carbonnel
Market Skeptics
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