Foreword
The
issue of environmental concern of fertilizer use though well appreciated by
most of the persons involved in farm operations, particularly in the recent
times more than anytime earlier, did not find a formal platform to be discussed
or deliberated upon before 2010 in India, when a small group of scientists and
technologists from all over country, involved in fertilizer and environment
related research and development, assembled at the University of Calcutta to
discuss on this theme area in remembrance of Prof. N.P.Datta, the doyen in
fertilizer chemistry and technology, and former Head of the Division of Soil Science
& Agricultural Chemistry, IARI and Director NRL. With the passage of three
years hence, the Society of Fertilizers & Environment was formed with a
national base headquartered at Kolkata and now at BCKV, Kalyani, West Bengal. As
one of the major activities SFE Newsletter was first published in January 2015,
and since then six such issues were published till 2017 by the Society of
Fertilizers and Environment, twice in a year, on a variety of theme areas of
global concern. After devoting the initial three on the role of major nutrients
on environmental degradations, I commented later in this column while dealing
with soil health, a key area, that ‘‘to me ‘soil health’ per se is not a
nomenclature in its simplistic term but a ‘concept’ to qualify agricultural and
environmental sustainability urging for renewed efforts if necessary to have a
relook into the entire domain and reinvent the methodologies and the parameters
in tandem”.
I now
think it to be appropriate at this stage to have a relook and draw a long-term
vision for a systematized approach. Following could be the approaches or theme
areas complimentary to each other. We have plans to prepare compendia, other
than Newsletter publications and interaction programmes arranged at regular
intervals with different stakeholders down to farmers and school children, for
prioritizing and refining in our future deliberations. I throw these ideas, for
the first time, inviting comments through this release from scientists,
technologists, planners, NGOs, and other field level workers.
Soil
health & fertilizer use
A. Quality of soil – a systems approach &
risk assessment during green revolution era
B. Soil
biology and their interactions with soil physical properties - impact on soil
quality
C. Soil
health and farm management – in the user-friendly language for different
stakeholders
Fertilizer
use and climate change
A. Impact
during post-industrial era
B. Impacts
since green revolution
C. Mitigating
climate change by moderating fertilizer use pattern
Fertilizer
use and soil & water degradation
A. Impact
of human activities on the nitrogen cycle, and vice-versa
B. Systems
damage in soil, water and biological properties
C. Contamination
of groundwater with nitrates, and of soil with cadmium, fluoride, mercury,
lead, selenium, radioactive minerals, other metals, as well as trace mineral
depletion
D. Soil
acidification
E. Eutrophication
of river and lake waters due to phosphorous contamination and loss of aquatic
organisms
F. Storm
water loss of fertilizers into river & lake waters and their impacts on
aquatic organisms.
Planetary
boundaries & biogeochemistry with respect to fertilizer use vis-à-vis
environmental protection
A. Biodiversity
loss
B. Biogeochemical
flows: nitrogen cycle and phosphorus cycle
C. Land and
freshwater use
D. Chemical
pollution
Industry-Application interface
A.
Central innovation
base on a public-private partnership (PPP) mode, and creation of a network for
information exchange amongst all stakeholders on environmental degradation and
human/animal health
B.
Customised and
fortified fertilizers use utilizing improved technology without compromising on
safety, quality and reliability for minimal impact on environmental degradation
and human/animal health
C.
Field testing of fertilizers and impacts on environmental degradation and
human/animal health
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