For India's Farmers, Urea Is The New God And Reels Are Prayers

Pritam Verma, a farmer from Uttar Pradesh's Barabanki district, uploaded an 8-minute Urea Aarti on Facebook on July 29, 2026. In the video, he sits at a collective bhajan-kirtan chaupal and sings with devotion.

The deity he is praying to is a 45-kilogram bag of fertiliser.

"Getting urea has become so difficult for a farmer that now urea is no less than a goddess," Verma told Decode, explaining that his performance is a satire on the country's fertiliser supply and distribution system.

The content struck a nerve. Soon after he posted it, Verma said, he started receiving calls from farmers across the region. "They were all struggling to get urea for their crops."

Verma's aarti is one entry in what has become a seasonal ritual across rural India's digital spaces. For the last few years, every sowing season, #Urea trends on the platforms where farmers post — satirical songs on YouTube, short reels on Instagram, worship videos that blur the line between joke and prayer. The subject is always the same: the difficulty of getting fertiliser when the crop needs it.

Last year, during the Kharif season, a video of a farmer performing puja over a bag of urea after managing to get one crossed 181,000 views.

This season, the new rules have made it even more difficult to get urea. To buy subsidised fertiliser, a farmer now needs a Farmer ID — a digital identity linked to land records, built under the government's AgriStack programme. How much fertiliser you get depends on how much land is in your name. But across India, millions of the people who actually sow, weed, and harvest do not own the land they work on. They are tenants, sharecroppers, labourers, women farming on family land that was never transferred. The new system cannot see them.

The fertiliser itself is not scarce.

On August 2, two young farmers posted a reel celebrating that they had finally got urea. The caption: "Jindagi mein pyar mile na mile, sahi samay par urea zaroor milna chahiye." (Whether you get love in life or not, you must get urea at the right time.)

Official data tells a strange story. As of August 3, 2026, Uttar Pradesh had 37.60 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) of urea available against an estimated requirement of 27.70 LMT — nearly 10 LMT more than needed. Yet 13.87 LMT sat in closing stock. Madhya Pradesh showed a similar pattern: against a requirement of 11.39 LMT, the state had 15.81 LMT available, with 4.92 LMT unsold. In both states, farmers reported being unable to get a single bag.

What stands between the surplus and the farmer is a set of digital systems.

The New Digital Gates

On May 19, 2026, Uttar Pradesh announced that subsidised fertiliser would now be sold only to farmers holding a Farmer ID. Over 2.5 crore IDs have been approved in the state, while 2.88 crore beneficiaries are under the PM- Kisan scheme in the state.

The Farmer ID is created under the central government's Digital Agriculture Mission, part of a digital public infrastructure called AgriStack. If agricultural land is recorded in your name, you can get one. The ID links your identity to state land records. The link, which sounds fairly simple, now governs who gets fertiliser and how much.

The reality looks different. At the Lalpur Multipurpose Primary Rural Coopertive Society in Bareilly, Secretary Adesh Kumar said the government has fixed 7 bags of urea and 5 bags of DAP per hectare for six months. POS machines track how many bags each farmer has received. No Farmer ID means you show the Khatauni — the land record — and you get fertiliser only for the land in your name. If you are a sharecropper, you need the landowner to write you an application. Fertiliser is then released through the owner's ID and an OTP.

In Madhya Pradesh, the system took a different form with similar friction. An e-Token system required farmers to book fertiliser through a portal. In Shamgarh, Mandsaur, two young farmers responded the way farmers increasingly do — with a reel, set to music, demanding the token system be scrapped.

Dooman Singh Patel, a farmer from Narsinghpur district, experienced the system at its most absurd. His token was issued for a distribution centre 125 kilometres from his home. "The maize crop was getting ruined, so I was forced to go," he told Decode. He hired a vehicle, spent ₹4,000 on transport — more than the cost of the urea — and got 16 bags instead of the 20 he needed for his 20 acres.

The portal had shown no stock nearby for a month. His DAP token took 15 days. His urea token took a month and a half.

After protests in Bhopal, the state temporarily suspended the system. On August 20, it resumed a revised version. Ramanjaneyulu GV, executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, noted that Telangana had tried and withdrawn a similar system. "It's a premature imposition," he said.

The People The System Cannot See

Mishan Film Production released a song about urea in August 2025: "Mudawa par hath dharke rowat kisanwa, mile na urea perai gawa dhnwa… hoi na fasal to chali jai janwa… (Holding his head in his hands, the farmer cries; urea isn't available, the paddy is ruined… If there is no yield, life will be lost.)" The song has been circulating again this season, shared by farmers who say the words still apply.

In Bareilly district's Kanunagla village, despair is visible.

Forty-five-year-old Kunwarpal did not sow a single crop this Kharif season. He does not own land, so no Farmer ID was made for him. When he learnt that fertiliser would only go to land-owning farmers, he decided there was no point in sowing. "Earlier, I used to bring as much fertiliser from the shop as needed," he said. Now he sits beneath a pakar tree or looks for daily-wage work. He tried Udham Singh Nagar for a job, found neither work nor a room, and came back. "I will sow during Rabi. I will settle it with the landowner beforehand so he gets me fertiliser on his land. Only if the owner agrees will I move forward with farming."

The problem running through the new system is stark: it was built for landholders, and many of the people who actually farm do not hold land.

Kripal Kashyap of Nara farms on a sharecropping arrangement. He sowed paddy on 17 bighas, but his landowner, who lives in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, could not come to authorise the fertiliser release. Without the owner's presence or OTP, Kripal was locked out. He managed two bags on the 2 bighas in his own name. The first application should happen within 15-20 days of sowing. Kripal fertilised his crop a month and a half late. "My crop hasn't grown properly," he said. "The yield will be lower."

Then there are the tangles in the records. Kanchan Lal, from Nara Faridpur, cannot get urea for his 4-bigha paddy crop. The land is in his wife Nattho Devi's name in the Khatauni, but her Farmer ID cannot be generated — the Khatauni lists her with her father's name, while her Aadhaar lists her with her husband's. Until the record is corrected at the tehsil, the system will not recognise her.

Rizwan Ali, a Panchayat Assistant making Farmer IDs in Nara, said such mismatches are common. A name spelled differently across two documents is enough to block the ID. District Agriculture Officer Ritusha Tiwari confirmed that of 5,45,404 registered farmers in Bareilly, 5,05,561 IDs had been generated as of September 11. Roughly 40,000 remained stuck in the gap between two databases.

Keval Ram, 52, had to halve his paddy acreage. His son Naresh's Farmer ID was blocked by an error in the Khatauni. He applied for correction in June. By September, nothing had been done. "I sowed on only 6 bighas out of 11. I got one bag of urea. If fertiliser is not available, the crop will be ruined, so why invest the input cost?"

Vasant Rajput could not get fertiliser because the land remains in his deceased father's name. He needs an heirship affidavit from the tehsil. Until then, the system treats him as if he owns no land.

At the smallest scale, there is Tarachand, a cattle rearer from Kanunagla.

He needed 15 kilograms of urea — a fraction of a bag — for green fodder. At the shop, he was told loose fertiliser was no longer available. Only full bags. He returned with nothing. "If I don't have the money to buy a whole bag, will I not get fertiliser?"

The loose-sale ban has layers. The Fertiliser (Control) Order, 1985 requires sale in sealed containers, though Clause 22 allows a retailer to keep one bag open. A 2017 NITI Aayog-commissioned assessment stated that loose sale was "not allowed." Tiwari said she had issued a district-level order banning it too: without the restriction, she argued, a retailer could record a full bag against a farmer's name, hand over a smaller quantity, and sell the rest to someone else. The rule is meant to prevent fraud.

For Tarachand, it means he cannot buy what he can afford.

The POS machines enforcing the quotas add their own friction. At the Lalpur cooperative, Secretary Umesh said the machine was down for over a week in mid-July. When it came back, long queues formed and farmers got their fertiliser late.

A farmer and influencer from Neemach, Madhya Pradesh, captured the mood in a reel during the 2025 Rabi season: "Urea ki zaroorat hai jaise gehun ke liye, bas ek katta chahiye, phoonkne ke liye." (Urea is needed just as wheat needs it — just one bag, to apply in the field.) By 2026, the ask had not changed. The systems around it had.

What the Government Says It's Fixing

On August 4, Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers Anupriya Patel told the Rajya Sabha that under a new Framework for Fertiliser Sale (FFS), the government has started selling fertilisers on a pilot basis in 56 districts across 23 states. The stated purpose: to make distribution more transparent, demand-based, and tied to a farmer's actual land and crop. District Agriculture Officer Tiwari said the rules are meant to ensure balanced use and prevent overuse.

There is a fiscal logic behind the push. International fertiliser prices have risen sharply since the Russia-Ukraine war. India imports heavily and spends large sums on subsidies to keep prices affordable. Agricultural researcher Nachiket Udupa said the government is trying to cut that bill by promoting what it calls scientifically calibrated use — a reform, he added, "that may be difficult to implement in practice."

The subsidy numbers show the direction. Government spending on urea subsidy fell from ₹1,68,676 crore in 2022-23 to ₹1,24,319 crore in 2024-25, according to the Department of Fertilizers. The revised estimate for 2025-26 is ₹1,26,460 crore. The budget for 2026-27: ₹1,16,799 crore.

Ramanjaneyulu GV of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture pointed out that the system was supposed to curb overuse and diversion of fertiliser to non-agricultural purposes. "But it was rolled out without first solving the problem of identifying cultivators."

In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, he noted, more than half of all cultivators are tenants who now have no access to subsidised fertiliser. In tribal areas, farmers without Forest Rights Act pattas were excluded. And the dosage caps are based on crop type, not soil health — so the recommended amounts may not be enough for depleted land.

Sameet Panda, associated with the Right to Food Campaign and Libtech, pointed out that the stakes extend well beyond fertiliser. The Farmer ID is becoming the key to sell crops to the government, claim insurance, and receive PM-Kisan benefits. "But digitisation depends on accurate, updated documents, access to a personal phone number, and reliable network connectivity," he said. "Conditions that are not always met."

Who Counts as a Farmer

More than 10.33 crore Farmer IDs had been generated across India by August 6, 2026. The government's target is 11 crore by 2026-27. In a March 2023 parliamentary reply, the Agriculture Ministry reported that India had approximately 14.65 crore operational holders, including 12.61 crore small and marginal holders, according to the Agriculture Census 2015–16. None of these numbers count tenant farmers, sharecroppers, or labourers who work the land but do not own it.

The question at the centre of the system is who the word "farmer" includes. The Swaminathan Commission's National Policy for Farmers defines it broadly — anyone actively engaged in growing crops, including cultivators, labourers, sharecroppers, tenants, livestock rearers, beekeepers, gardeners, pastoralists, fishers etc. The NDA government's Doubling Farmers' Income Committee adopted the same definition.

"The digitisation currently being carried out is not following this definition," Udupa said. If the system is designed primarily to contain the subsidy bill, he argued, it risks shutting out people who are farmers in reality. "Fiscal management is taking precedence over farmer welfare."

The technical infrastructure has its own fractures. AgriStack's monitoring dashboard for eight states showed large numbers of Farmer ID records marked as errors during data processing. In Madhya Pradesh alone, 19.12 lakh records were flagged, with June 14, 2026 listed as the last successful data synchronisation. Maharashtra recorded 3.39 lakh error records; Andhra Pradesh, 1.73 lakh in live processing. The dashboard does not define what causes a record to be flagged, whether the errors represent unique farmers, or whether they affect access to benefits.

On 24 September Decode contacted Chandan Kumar, Under Secretary for Digital Agriculture, to understand these records. Before any response was received, the error data was removed from the dashboard on September 29.

Venky Ramachandran, founder of Krishidotsystem, explained what goes wrong under the hood. Land may have been inherited, subdivided, or transferred without every database being updated. "One part of the identity in one layer changed. It creates conflict in the rest, instead of getting updated across the layers," he said. When state revenue departments update land records, the Farmer Registry needs to receive and process the changes. Failures at any step — in the APIs, the data formats, the processing jobs — generate errors.

In March 2025, the Union Agriculture Ministry told the Lok Sabha that all landholder farmers would be included in the Farmer Registry. Whether to include tenants was left to individual states. At a regional agriculture conference in Hyderabad on September 18, 2026, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan asked southern states to develop SOPs for registering tenant farmers — an acknowledgement, at least, that the gap exists.

Ramanjaneyulu argued that land ownership is a property right, not proof that someone farms. "AgriStack should come up with cultivator details for each land parcel. This can be registered by FPOs, local panchayats," he said. Without that, a land-record-based ID as the sole identity for farmers is "not fair."

For tribal communities, the problem runs deeper. Sameet Panda noted that many tribals practise jhum — shifting cultivation — moving from one piece of land to another after harvesting. They rarely hold formal documents. "If a cultivator is farming on land registered in their grandfather's name, refusing to recognise them as a farmer until the land is legally transferred is a major anomaly," he said.

Anil Yadav, Madhya Pradesh president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Tikait), made a practical point: "Not all farmers are educated, not all farmers know how to operate mobile phones. Tenant farmers and landless farmers are being completely excluded."

Panda framed the wider concern. "This is not just digitisation but centralisation," he said. "The state is designing digital systems according to its own preferences, without consulting farmers. There is no dialogue between farmers and the state."

Decode reached out to Pramod Kumar Meherda, Additional Secretary (Farmers Welfare and IT) in the Union Agriculture Ministry and a key official behind AgriStack, seeking responses on the exclusion of tenant and sharecropper farmers and the use of land data to determine fertiliser access. This report will be updated if a response is received.

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In June, a farmer in Madhya Pradesh had posted a video — harmonium playing, a song in his own voice — pleading for fertiliser: "Mhara Mohan Kaka ji, mhara Shivraj Mama ji, Khad to dilao fasal ug gai hai ji… (Dear leaders, please get us fertiliser, the crop has already sprouted…)"

The song was addressed to politicians by name. The aarti was addressed to the urea bag itself. The reels, month after month, season after season, keep being made. The farmers' digital protests and the government's digitisation process run in parallel on the same internet, each speaking a different language about the same bag of fertiliser.

In Kanunagla, Kunwarpal is not making reels. He is sitting under a pakar tree, waiting for the Rabi season, hoping a landowner will agree to let him farm on their land and get him a bag of urea on their Farmer ID.