The fertiliser ministry has deployed a new analytical tool and a national-to-retail dashboard to track fertiliser dispatches, movement and inventories in real time, to prevent localised shortages that can leave farmers facing long queues at retail outlets.
The system enables early detection of sudden shortages and irregular purchasing trends, allowing for quick remedial measures, officials said.
The new tool, monitored at the highest level, has been operationalised to prevent sudden fertiliser shortages like those that have occurred in the past. The tool aligns closely with the central government’s Integrated Fertiliser Management System (iFMS), through which more than 140 million Aadhaar-linked fertiliser buyers and over 0.25 million retail outlets process nearly 70 million tonnes of fertiliser transactions each year.
Creating Farmer IDs— the responsibility of state governments — is part of the central government’s ambitious AgriStack programme, which aims to establish a fully operational, dynamic and real-time database of Indian farmers.
According to the latest assessment by the agriculture ministry, the digital agriculture mission, which is nearly two years old, had linked 61 per cent of the country’s sown area to a Farmer ID as of August 15, 2026. Around 17 states, including Bihar, Jharkhand, Punjab, Haryana, Assam, Kerala, Odisha and West Bengal, have less than a third of their sown area linked to a Farmer ID, according to the ministry.
Officials said linking digital Farmer IDs with fertiliser sales will allow purchases in states to be progressively verified against land ownership and crop patterns, which can then be analysed to determine actual agricultural demand.
“Utilising the AgriStack IDs, farmers can book required quantities via mobile applications, generating QR codes that are validated directly at point-of-sale (PoS) devices to ensure equitable access and transparent sales,” an official said.
The linkage can also go a long way in checking pilferage and leakages in fertiliser distribution, which have con- tributed to consumption of some fertilisers such as urea touching record levels of more than 40 million tonnes in FY26. India’s fertiliser subsidy has also regularly surpassed Budget estimates in recent years, largely due to increased consumption, which is sometimes blamed on pilferage and leakages in the system.
According to an official assessment, in 2024-25, 65 per cent of farmers in the country bought five to seven bags of urea in a year, which is considered reasonable, while the remaining 35 per cent accounted for the maximum load of urea usage. Around 163 of the country’s 730 districts have high fertiliser usage.
In FY26, India’s annual fertiliser subsidy topped the Budget estimate of ₹1.67 trillion by almost 11 per cent, reaching ₹1.86 trillion due to higher sales and a rise in imported prices.
Actual expenditure on fertiliser subsidy in FY26, according to officials, is expected to be more than ₹2 trillion. In FY27, too, the Revised estimate of the fertiliser subsidy could be substantially higher than the Budget estimate of ₹1.70 trillion due to the West Asia war and higher local consumption.
