Context: According to latest data by the Ministry of Agriculture, the use of chemical fertilizers in India is linearly increasing every year and Puducherry, Telangana, Punjab top in fertilizer consumption.
Trend of Consumption

• Puducherry tops the chart in consumption of main fertilizers from 2015-16 to 2019-20 (in kg/hectare) adopted by Telangana and Punjab. Interestingly Bihar is in a neck-to-neck competitors with Haryana in the usage of fertilizers.
• Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka are additionally among the many high 10 States utilizing fertilizers.
• Punjab, Haryana and Telangana additionally feature among the many high 5 States utilizing pesticides, with Maharashtra main the chart adopted by Uttar Pradesh. 
• Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal are different States that use pesticides excessively.

Key highlights

• According to the Impact Study of Soil Health Card Scheme conducted by the National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management, India consumes about 25.6 million tonnes of fertilizers, mostly nitrogen (17 million tonnes) followed by phosphorous (6 million tonnes) and potassium (2.5 million tonnes).
• India spends about Rs 1 lakh crore on fertilizer subsidy.
• It is estimated that subsidy amount is about Rs 6,500/ha of the net cropped area and about Rs 7,000/farmer.
• As a result of the excessive and imbalanced use of fertilizers, the amount of food grain produced per kg of fertilizer applied declined from 13 kg in the 1970s to just 4 kg by 2010.

Impact on soil well being

• Over a five-decade period, the All India Coordinated Research Project on ‘Long Term Fertilizer Experiments’ found that continuous use of nitrogenous fertiliser alone had a negative impact on soil health and crop productivity, resulting in deficiencies of other major and micro nutrients.

Imbalanced use of chemical fertilizers, coupled with low addition of organic matter and neglect of micro and secondary nutrients will result in:

• Multi-nutrient deficiencies and deterioration of soil health in intensively cultivated areas.
• Deficient nutrient may affect plant growth and cause plant physiological disorders.

There is the possibility of nitrate contamination in groundwater above the permissible limit of 10 mg NO3-N /L due to excessive/over-use of nitrogenous fertilizers.

• It will have serious consequence on human/animal health if used for drinking purpose.