Excessive use of synthetic fertilizers main cause of soil degradation
Source: Chronicle News Service / Mission Oinam

Imphal, April 24 2023: Soil degradation is one among the numerous challenges that global climate change has put to survival of the humans and excessive use of synthetic fertilizer happens to be the main cause of soil degradation in Manipur.

As per the United Nations (UN) report, around 40 percent of the total land mass of Earth is experiencing soil degradation with the report also mentioning that almost 30 percent of India's total geographical area has suffered soil degradation.

Even though there is no specific report for Manipur, sign of huge change in soil fertility has been detected.

State Soil Testing Laboratory, Porompat collected 60,000 soil samples from different parts of Manipur sometimes back and many of the samples were found to have less Ph value than ought to be.

This means that the samples with less Ph value are highly acidic and it is not a good sign for the state.

Apart from affecting farmers and forest dwellers of the state, it is natural for soil degradation to give huge impact to economy and environment.

When contacted, State Soil Testing Laboratory's assistant agriculture officer Moirangthem Geetchandra informed The People's Chronicle that degradation of soil fertility have been detected in majority of paddy fields in the valley area of Manipur with the main reason cited as excessive use of synthetic fertilizers.

According to Geetchandra, the agriculture sector is badly hit by climate change and environment degradation and there had been instances of the state not producing crops due to abnormality in weather and unpredictable flood and drought.

This compelled farmers to use synthetic fertilizers like urea and diamond excessively thereby spoiling soil in a big way.

In one 'Pari' of land government recommends 21-30 kg of urea while soil testing is important as this will help in detecting soil fertility.

The amount of fertilizer to be applied depends on variety of crop to be planted and soil fertility.

However, many farmers of the state apply one bag of urea (45kg) in one'Sangam' of land, he said, adding that excessive use of fertilizer increases compactness of soil fertility.

While stating that compact soils have lesser water holding capacity and thus rain water from such land flow into drains and get wasted, Geetchandra stressed the need for using traditional composed manures to improve soil fertility.

Enhancing organic matters in paddy field by scattering straw after harvesting crop is important as such a method will help in survival of microbes, which helps plants to absorb phosphorous contents in air and nitrogen in ammoniacal form.

However, the use of insecticide, fungicide and bactericide in paddy field prevent the useful microbes to live in plants, he added.

According to Geetchandra, traditional method of agriculture using cow dung and urine is no longer applied nowadays and around 70 percent of paddy fields in valley areas of Manipur have stopped this practice.

Nevertheless, enhancing organic matters in soil is important and farmers of the state need to understand this, he explained and appealed farmers to use fertilizer not more than the quantity recommended by the government and conduct soil testing regularly.

On the other hand, LOUSAL president Mutum Churamani told The People's Chronicle that the state has 1,95,000 hectares of paddy held as per record of state agriculture department as on February 2023 .

Of the total paddy fields, 88,820 hectares are in hill area and 106,180 hectares in the valley.

Of the total paddy fields, 37,900 hectares are being used as organic fields, he said adding that organic farming is being applied in 12,000 hectares of paddy fields in the valley.

He also said that no synthetic fertilizers are applied in 20,000 hectares of water logged paddy fields.

According to Churamani, state government demanded 15 MT of urea in the year 2015/16 but the demand increased to 22MT in 2017.With the deduction of paddy fields applying organic method and water logged fields, the state does not need even 22MT urea, he said.

While accepting that excessive use of fertilizer causes soil degradation, Churamani said government is yet to record actual area of paddy fields till date and demand fertilizer based on the recommended amount.

He also stressed the need for having agriculture land expansion policy for the state and rectifying the existing system of fertilizer distribution.

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