One vision calls for 45 million tonnes of mineral fertilizers by 2050. Another believes smarter agriculture can achieve the same harvest with far fewer inputs

For decades, India’s agricultural strategy has rested on a simple premise: more people require more food, and more food requires more fertilizers. It was this philosophy that underpinned the Green Revolution, transforming India from a food-deficit nation into one of the world’s largest producers of cereals. Yet, as the country enters an era shaped by climate change, resource constraints and technological innovation, that long-held assumption is being challenged as never before.

The latest projections presented by Kuldeep Sati, Chief (Statistics & IT), The Fertiliser Association of India (FAI), at SOMS 2026 reaffirm the conventional narrative. India’s population is expected to rise from around 1.45 billion today to nearly 1.7 billion by 2050. To feed this expanding population, food grain production will need to increase from an estimated 376 million metric tonnes in 2025-26 to approximately 450 million metric tonnes by mid-century. Correspondingly, total plant nutrient demand is projected to grow from 40 million metric tonnes to 60 million metric tonnes. Mineral fertilizers are expected to account for 45 million metric tonnes, up from the current 33 million metric tonnes, while nutrients supplied through organic and biological sources are projected to rise from 7 million metric tonnes to 15 million metric tonnes.

Viewed through the lens of conventional agricultural planning, the projections appear entirely rational. A larger population demands higher food production, and higher food production inevitably requires greater nutrient application. Mineral fertilizers, despite the growing prominence of organic and biological alternatives, will therefore continue to remain central to India’s food security architecture.

Yet embedded within the same dataset lies a paradox that has sparked one of the most intellectually significant debates confronting Indian agriculture.

FAI’s own assessment reveals that India’s challenge is not merely one of nutrient availability, but of nutrient utilization. Less than 50 per cent of applied nitrogen is actually absorbed by crops. Phosphorus use efficiency remains between just 15 and 25 per cent, potassium utilization between 50 and 60 per cent, sulphur between 8 and 12 per cent, while the efficiency of applied micronutrients remains below 5 per cent. In practical terms, a substantial proportion of the nutrients manufactured, subsidized and distributed across the country never contributes to crop productivity. Instead, they are lost through leaching, volatilization, runoff or chemical fixation within the soil.

The consequences are visible in the alarming deterioration of soil fertility across the country. Nearly 94 per cent of Indian soils are deficient in nitrogen, 91 per cent in phosphorus, 51 per cent in potassium, 41 per cent in sulphur, 37 per cent in zinc and 23 per cent in boron. These widespread deficiencies suppress crop productivity while simultaneously reducing the efficiency of every additional kilogram of fertilizer applied. The result is a vicious cycle: declining soil health encourages greater fertilizer application, while increasing fertilizer use delivers progressively diminishing returns.

From FAI’s perspective, these realities reinforce the need for higher nutrient availability. The association argues that mineral fertilizers will continue to play a pivotal role in ensuring food security, even as greater emphasis is placed on balanced fertilization, specialty fertilizers, organic manures and biological nutrient sources. India’s extensive fertilizer distribution network, comprising nearly 300,000 sale points supported by the government’s Integrated Fertilizer Monitoring System (iFMS), provides the institutional framework necessary to meet this growing demand.

Manohar Malani, Founder, MitraSena; Member SFIA, however, draws a strikingly different conclusion from the very same evidence.

His argument begins with a deceptively simple observation. India’s food grain production is projected to increase by approximately 20 per cent, rising from 376 million metric tonnes to 450 million metric tonnes. Mineral fertilizer consumption, however, is projected to rise by nearly 35 per cent, increasing from 33 million metric tonnes to 45 million metric tonnes. To Malani, this disparity is not a reflection of future necessity but an indication of persistent inefficiency. If fertilizer consumption is projected to grow substantially faster than agricultural output, then the system is becoming increasingly input-intensive rather than more productive.

For Malani, the central question is not how much additional fertilizer India must consume, but how efficiently the country can utilize every kilogram of nutrient applied.

His philosophy represents a departure from the input-driven paradigm that has dominated Indian agriculture for decades. He argues that the next agricultural revolution will be powered not by larger quantities of fertilizers but by smarter nutrient management. Precision agriculture, specialty fertilizers, nano formulations, biological inputs, biostimulants, digital soil diagnostics, artificial intelligence, remote sensing and data-driven agronomy together have the potential to dramatically improve Fertilizer Use Efficiency (FUE) and Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE).

His proposition is ambitious but grounded in technological optimism. If India succeeds in improving nutrient-use efficiency by around 40 per cent over the next twenty-five years, he believes mineral fertilizer consumption need not increase to 45 million metric tonnes. Instead, it could potentially decline to nearly 28 million metric tonnes while still enabling food grain production of approximately 450 million metric tonnes. Such a transformation would fundamentally challenge the historical assumption that higher agricultural output must inevitably be accompanied by higher fertilizer consumption.

Ironically, the positions advanced by FAI and Malani are not entirely contradictory. Both acknowledge that India’s current nutrient-use efficiency is unacceptably low. Both recognise the urgent need to restore soil health and address widespread secondary and micronutrient deficiencies. Both support greater adoption of specialty fertilizers, organic manures and biological inputs. Their divergence lies in what they believe technology can achieve. FAI assumes that efficiency improvements, while important, will not be sufficient to offset rising nutrient demand. Malani believes those very efficiency gains should become the principal engine of future agricultural growth.

His argument also resonates with a broader transformation taking place across global agriculture. Increasingly, advanced agricultural economies are moving away from measuring success by the volume of inputs consumed and towards measuring the productivity of those inputs. Malani’s philosophy aligns squarely with this global transition towards “producing more with less.” Rather than equating agricultural progress with the sheer quantity of fertilizer consumed, he argues that the more meaningful benchmark is the number of kilograms of grain produced per kilogram of nutrient applied. In this framework, efficiency—not input intensity—becomes the defining metric of agricultural success.

If India succeeds in significantly improving Fertilizer Use Efficiency and Nutrient Use Efficiency through precision agriculture, specialty fertilizers, biological inputs, digital advisory systems and scientific nutrient stewardship, the country’s food security trajectory could be fundamentally transformed. Future food security may depend less on increasing fertilizer consumption and more on maximising the productivity of every unit of nutrient applied. Such an approach would not only strengthen agricultural output but also improve farmer profitability, reduce subsidy burdens, restore soil health and lower the environmental footprint of Indian agriculture.

This is the intellectual fault line that now confronts Indian agriculture. One school of thought assumes that feeding an additional 250 million people will inevitably require proportionately higher fertilizer consumption. The other argues that science, innovation and efficiency can decisively break that historical relationship. The answer will shape not merely India’s fertilizer demand by 2050, but the character of its next agricultural revolution. Perhaps the future lies not in choosing between these two visions, but in synthesising them. Mineral fertilizers will undoubtedly remain indispensable for sustaining India’s food security. Equally indispensable, however, will be the relentless pursuit of higher efficiency through innovation, precision agriculture and integrated nutrient management.

The debate, therefore, is not ultimately about whether India should consume 45 million metric tonnes of mineral fertilizers or 28 million metric tonnes. It is about whether the country continues to measure agricultural success by the volume of inputs applied or by the intelligence with which those inputs are deployed. That distinction may ultimately determine whether India’s next Green Revolution is defined by more fertilizer—or better fertilizer use.

— Suchetana Choudhury (suchetana.choudhuri@agrospectrumindia.com)