Reducing the availability of urea in various states by 2 million tonnes (MT) alone will result in savings of Rs 4,000 crore, say fertiliser manufacturers.
They said a coordinated effort by the government, industry, academia and farmers can avoid lopsided consumption of fertilisers. According to industry estimates, excessive use of fertilisers has reduced the efficiency of urea by 40 per cent, phosphorous by 25 per cent and potash 60 per cent.
India currently has stocks of 2.4 MT in the field and silos, while the expected production and imports are 20 MT and 6.6 MT respectively.
This means a total stock of 29 MT. A mere 2 MT reduction will not impact food production and can be achieved by systematically arriving at the actual consumption required and by avoiding excessive storage and excessive usage.
Similarly, they said, the government can reduce the availability of phosphates by 20 per cent in states that have high rabi acreage as the soil containing phosphorous applied in the earlier season can be used for crops in the following season. A reduction of 20 per cent of its usage will result in a saving of Rs 3,100 crore.
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If the consumption of potash is also brought down from the existing 5 MT to 2.5 MT per annum, an additional amount of Rs 3,750 crore can be saved.
This apart, they said, India has large volumes of pressmud (a sugarcane by-product) as well as city compost, which can be used by farmers to improve their soil structure. A token subsidy of Rs 500 per tonne towards transportation cost can increase this consumption substantially leading to reduction in fertiliser usage.
Encouraging the usage of highly efficient water soluble fertilisers will also help in addressing the scarcity problem. Usage of 200,000 tonnes of these inputs will displace the consumption of 1.6 MT of conventional fertilisers.
Industry analysts said fertiliser prices in the country have remained unchanged during the last eight years, whereas the other components of farming like diesel, petrol, labour, agro-chemicals and seeds have all registered substantial increase in prices. Therefore, the Indian farmer has not felt the price factor of fertilisers pinching his pocket.
When price does not impact usage, they said, volumes go up automatically. This explained why the fertiliser volume and subsidy bill have gone up manifold in the past decade while the same acreage of land is being cultivated every year and food production almost stagnated at around 215 MT per annum.
"In 2002, India was having enough urea domestically to even attempt possible exports to neighbouring countries. The situation had changed leading to an import bill of nearly Rs 12,000 crore per annum, which is solely due to the fact that the farmer had not recognised the cost of urea he was using," they pointed out.