Geography

 Shortage of fertilizers

·        Types Primary fertilizers includes Nitrogen, Phosphorus, PotassiumNitrogenous – Urea Phosphatic – Di-ammonium Phosphate Potassic – Muriate of Potash (MoP) fertilizers.

·        Secondary fertilizers include Calcium, Magnesium and Sulphur. Some micronutrients include – Zinc, Iron, Boron, Chloride etc.

·        India is that the 3rd largest producer of fertilizer once China & the USA.

·        India is the 2nd largest consumer of fertilizer after china. India also ranks 2nd in the production of nitrogenous fertilizers and 3rd in phosphatic fertilizers.

·        Potash requirement is met through imports since we have limited reserves of potash.

·        Although India progressed loads with respect to the production and consumption of fertilizers, it still lags behind many countries in consumption per hectare. Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh have additional consumption per hectare of fertilizer than India..

·        The self-sufficiency in urea production achieved by 2000 was lost because of unfriendly policies that discouraged further investments in the sector for 2 decades and also because of the privatisation move and closure of variety of plants on account of low energy potency that paved the way for large-scale imports.  

·        India depends heavily on imports for meeting its fertilizer raw materials (natural gas, sulphur and rock phosphate), intermediates (ammonia and sulphuric and phosphoric acids), and finished products (diammonium phosphate, potash and complex fertilizers) requirements.

·        India, the world’s largest urea importer, Urea imports amount to 8-9 million tonnes per annum mostly from China, Oman, Ukraine, and Egypt.

·        On an average, five million tonnes of phosphatic fertilizers are imported to India mostly from China, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Jordan Potash supplies (around four million tonnes a year) are fully imported from Canada, Russia, Belarus Jordan, Lithuania, Israel, and Germany major suppliers of DAP to India-Saudi Arabia, Morocco and China.

·        Presently, the fertilizer production of the country is 42-45 million tonnes, and imports are at around eighteen million tonnes.

·        India’s fertiliser consumption in FY20 was about sixty one million tonnes — of that fifty fifth was urea.

·        Since non-urea (MoP, DAP, complex) varieties value higher, several farmers a lot of highly to|favor to|opt to|choose to} use more urea than truly required.

·        The govt has taken variety of measures to cut back organic compound consumption..

·        It introduced neem-coated urea to cut back smuggled diversion of urea for non-agricultural uses.

·        It is also stepped up the promotion of organic and zero-budget farming.

·        Subsidy Subsidy on Urea: The Centre pays subsidy on urea to fertiliser manufacturers on the premise of cost of production at every plant and also the units are needed to sell the fertiliser at the government have set maximum Retail price (MRP)

·        Subsidy on Non-Urea Fertilizers: The MRPs of non-urea fertilizers are decontrolled or fixed by the companies.

·        The Centre, however, pays a flat per-tonne subsidy on these nutrients to ensure they are priced at “reasonable levels”.

·        Examples of non-urea fertilizers:

·        Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP), Muriate of Potash (MOP). Russia produces 50 million tonnes of fertilizers annually accounting for 13 per cent of the world’s total output.

·        Russia produces fifty million tonnes of fertilizers annually accounting for thirteen per cent of the world’s total output.

its also the most important exporter of urea, NPKs, ammonia, UAN and ammonium nitrate, and also the third-largest potash exporter.