By Satyam Saxena
Soil health is not just a medium for healthy crop production; it’s also a vital pillar to support sustainable food production and ultimately a nation’s economy. In India, where over 45% of the population works in agriculture, soil health underpins household and national food security, rural incomes and the economy at large. Despite this dependence, the ratio of agricultural production to the national income, i.e. GDP has fallen from 35% in 1990 to 15% in 2023, a decline driven by low productivity, shrinking farm incomes, and environmental degradation (Government of India, 2023).
India faces an annual economic loss of ₹2.54 trillion annually—about 2% of its GDP—due to land degradation and unsustainable land-use practices (TERI, 2018). For smallholder farmers, soil degradation is a silent economic burden that reduces yields and increases input costs. In Bihar, studies by the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) show that droughts have a lasting impact on soil quality and agricultural productivity, with increasing frequency and severity exacerbating vulnerabilities in states like of Bihar and its neighboring states (Nageswararao et al., 2016; Singh et al., 2022).
The frequency of these drought conditions pushes farmers into a vicious cycle of low productivity, high costs for irrigation, and a growing dependence on non-farm income sources exacerbating the state’s vulnerability to drought (Kishore et al., 2014).