Over 24 lakh soil health cards issued in Punjab, but fertiliser usage down by only 7% in two years

Under the SHC scheme, samples of farmers’ land are collected and after testing in the laboratories for over a dozen nutrients, the SHC is issued to the farmers mentioning the level of such nutrients in their fields so that farmers can use the fertilisers as per the actual need.

Data sourced from Punjab Agriculture Department, revealed that Punjab was using around 35.86 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) fertilisers, including around 28.36 LMT urea and nearly 7.50 LMT di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) in 2017, which has come down to 33.47 LMT — around 7 per cent decrease — in total usage of fertilisers in two years.

An expert from Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), Ludhiana said that the usage was “very high” despite Punjab having over around 40 lakh hectares is under cultivation — 37 lakh hectares under agriculture and over three lakh hectares under horticulture.

Most farmers in Punjab use around 80 kg to 100 kg of DAP and 150 kg of Urea per acre during the Rabbi season (October to March), while as per the recommendation farmers should not use more than 50 kg of DAP per acre and 90 kg of Urea in Rabbi season.

Agricultural Development Officer, Pathankot, Dr Amrik Singh, said that SHCs are the report cards of farmers’ soil health and they should go by the recommendations mentioned on the SHC issued to them instead using fertilisers blindly. “Our farmers are going beyond the recommended dose of the fertilisers and now they should curtail huge input cost,” he stressed.

In the first and second cycle of the Soil Health scheme, total 16,70,000 samples of soil were collected including 8,35,000 in each cycle from across the 22 districts of Punjab and 12.51 lakh and 11.61 lakh Soil Health Cards were issued in first and second cycles to the farmers, respectively. The third cycle was conducted under ‘Model Village Scheme’ where mostly one villages was selected per agricultural block and 17,793 samples were taken from the selected villages and a similar number of SHCs were issued.

The usage of DAP could come down from 7.50 LMT to 6.70 LMT (80,000 tonnes — around 9.4 per cent decreases) from 2017 to 2019. Urea usage has come down from 28.36 LMT to 26.83 LMT (1.59 LMT — 5.4 per cent — decrease) in 2019. Both the fertilisers were decreased mainly during Kharif Season (April to October) season.

The data uploaded on the portal of the Ministry of Agriculture, as per SHC Scheme, says that Punjab’s soil has recorded low phosphorus in 35 per cent of the total farmland, low Potassium on 22 per cent of land low Nitrogen on 10 per cent of the land while 95 per cent of land of Punjab is moderately alkaline.

“Going by this record of the soil health the usage of Urea, which contains Nitrogen, should be curtailed to many fold in Punjab as it is found low only on 10 per cent land under farming, but its usage is very high. DAP could also be decreased to a large extent,” said a senior officer in the Soil Health Department of Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), Ludhiana.

“The usage of Urea could be curtailed not because farmers wanted it, but because of the changed packing of Urea bags. Earlier, one Urea bag mostly used to contain 50 kg and now the packing of 45 kg bag was introduced to curtail its usage because our farmers go for by number of bags not by kgs and when they are using two to three bags per acre, the usage of urea is decreases 10 to 15 kg per acre because of the small packing,” said a senior officer in the Agriculture Department.

Joint Director, Fertilisers, Agriculture Department, Jagtar Singh Brar, said that Punjab can easily avoid usage of DAP in the Kharif season because of DAP, which meets the need of Phosphorus in soil, used largely in Rabbi Season and due to winters and it is not fully used and its effect remains in the soil for Kharif crops too.

“Farmers are learning from the SHC scheme and gradually usage of fertilisers would come down,” said Brar. Experts said that while the cost of one bag of 50 kg DAP is around Rs 1250, one bag of Urea costs around Rs 250 and because of this Urea usage is four-times more than the DAP in Punjab.

Farmers can save a huge amount by following the instructions given on their Soil Health Card and from Soil Health Maps provided in the model villages rather than using fertilisers blindly as excess of anything is bad, stressed Brar. He said that in two cycles of the SHC Scheme they have covered all farming families of Punjab twice.