A few words from the President, SFE
Environmental issues and steps to upswing partial
factor productivity of nutrients use are mutually exclusive
The growth of
agriculture sector in India in 8th Plan was 4 %, 2 % in 9th
Plan, 1.8 % in 10th Plan – the trend strongly signaling the need for immediate
steps to arrest the downward slide, but what’s more, it is essential to reverse
the trend with total cultivated area remaining static and the population
booming fast. Contrastingly, for service and industrial sectors the trends are
upswing. Fertilizer is possibly the most critical input to stop decelerating
growth trend in agriculture, although it amply signified its role since
sixties, the era for green revolution. Introspection suggests gross negligence
of factors like nutrient balance, rampant use of fertilizers by those who can
afford, complete neglect of soil health parameters particularly the biological
and physical properties & their interactions, practically no attention to
heavy metal contamination to soils, absence of site specific integrated
nutrient management practices ensuring demand driven nutrient release at
different stages of plant growth, over-looking the deleterious roles of toxic
and deficient nutrient concentrations in soils and water, lack of appropriate
fertilizer pricing policies, etc., the role of nutrient-water interactions not
very much appreciated particularly in rainfed areas notwithstanding, are some of the key issues rendering
fertilizer use efficiency gradually losing the steam over nearly six decades in
the country. Not to overlook at the same time are non-judicious fertilizer use interacting
with land management practices impact the environment, the major ones
being inappropriate disposal of nutrients like P to
rivers and lakes at high doses leading to eutrophication damaging the aquatic
lives, influx of extra N due to human activities over and above that
contributed by natural sources causing deleterious effect to nutrient cycle,
though no such data have been documented in India, release of GHG like methane,
carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, etc, to the atmosphere leading to global
warming, and nitrate pollution of the groundwater.
Rice yield and partial factor productivity (PFP)
of fertilizer use in India, China and the US, 1965 – 2009. The fertilizer data
are for arable land. Sources: FAOSTAT (2012) and World Bank (2012
Global temporal trends in Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE) vary by
region. For N, P and K, partial nutrient balance (ratio of nutrients removed by
crop harvest to fertilizer nutrients applied) and partial factor productivity
(crop production per unit of nutrient applied) for Africa, North America,
Europe, and the EU-15 are trending upwards, while in Latin America, India, and
China they are trending downwards. Though these global regions can be divided
into two groups based on temporal trends, great variability exists in factors
behind the trends within each group. Numerous management and environmental
factors, some of which have been enumerated in the above paragraph, including
plant water status, interact to influence NUE. In similar fashion, plant
nutrient status can markedly influence water use efficiency.
The Society for Fertilizers and Environment have arranged
deliberations through this one-day seminar a good variety of areas to be
addressed through oral and poster presentations in presence of leading farmers
in the State which I believe will invoke new issues of research to upswing the
falling trend of partial factor productivity of fertilizer use with due protection
to environment in future.
President, Society for Fertilizers and Environment
Email: hssen.india@gmail.com
Dated:
Kolkata, 8 March, 2017
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