The previous piece on this blog, "Nature Versus Nurture: India's Fertiliser-Fed Food Security", made an uncomfortable case: the "nature" story of Indian crop yields is propped up by an imported, gas-priced, and — per its second half — soil-degrading "nurture." Decades of urea-heavy fertilisation have been drawing down soil organic matter even as they kept yields up. That argument ended on a diagnosis, not a cure. It left open the obvious next question: if urea-heavy nurture has been costing the soil, what does a better nurture look like, and where does it actually stand today — not in policy-speak, but in plants, subsidies, and hectares?

This piece tries to answer that, honestly, using two real but under-examined pieces of Indian policy infrastructure: the GOBARdhan bio-fertiliser production network (biogas/CBG plants that produce Fermented Organic Manure as a by-product and sell it to farmers under a Central subsidy), and the Green Credit Programme (a tree-plantation incentive scheme targeting degraded and wasteland). Individually, each is a modest, still-early piece of policy. Together, they raise a genuinely interesting possibility for the specific problem this blog's readers care about most: regrowing arid and degraded land. Bio-fertiliser can rebuild soil biology — the organic matter and microbial activity that make soil hold water and nutrients. Tree plantation can re-vegetate the land itself. Two different schemes, aimed at two different halves of the same degraded-land problem, running on parallel tracks that — as far as the sources gathered here show — do not yet talk to each other. That gap, and what it would take to close it, is the spine of this article.

Two data gaps get flagged plainly rather than glossed over: nobody in the sources compiled here has published actual FOM/LFOM/PROM production volumes (tonnes produced, hectares treated) for the 119 GOBARdhan plants — only plant counts and subsidy mechanics are documented. And the Green Credit Programme's own registry portal shows no populated uptake data as of this check. Both gaps matter for anyone trying to judge whether this is a real correction or a pilot-stage promise, and both are called out below rather than filled in with invented numbers.

Part 1 — India's Bio-Fertiliser Production Base

The infrastructure behind India's most concrete bio-fertiliser push runs through the GOBARdhan initiative (Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan) — biogas and Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) plants that, alongside the gas they sell, produce three organic soil amendments as by-products: Fermented Organic Manure (FOM), Liquid FOM (LFOM), and Phosphate-Rich Organic Manure (PROM). As of the most recent Gazette notification (25 February 2026), 119 individual plants across India have been authorised by the Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (DA&FW) to sell these products in bulk, loose form directly to farmers — not just in packaged bags through a marketer, which is the default, more restrictive channel under fertiliser law.

Seven notifications, 27 months

The 119-plant total was built up gradually across seven separate Gazette notifications between November 2023 and February 2026:

Each authorisation runs three years from its Gazette publication date, so the earliest cohort (Notification I) starts coming up for renewal in November 2026 — worth watching as an indicator of whether the programme is treated as a going concern or allowed to lapse plant by plant.

Where the plants actually are

The 119 plants are spread across 16 states and union territories, but concentration is heavy. Uttar Pradesh alone holds 28 plants — roughly a quarter of the national total — and the top six states account for about 70% of all authorised plants:

A handful of large operators hold multiple authorisations rather than one plant apiece. The Reliance group (Reliance Industries, Reliance Bioenergy, Reliance Chemicals & Materials, Reliance New Solar Energy) holds roughly ten CBG plants across Notifications V through VII, spanning Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Mahindra Waste to Energy Solutions Ltd. holds six plants (all added in a single tranche, Notification II). Carbon Masters India Pvt Ltd. runs four plants concentrated in Bengaluru alone (Koramangala, Mattikere, Kalidasa Road, Domlur). Public-sector players also appear directly in the list: Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (Budaun, UP), GAIL India (Ranchi, Jharkhand), Indian Oil Corporation's bio-fuel complex (Gorakhpur, UP), and Indian Potash Ltd (Muzaffarnagar, UP) — the very first plant named in Notification I, dated 14 November 2023. Other Notification-I examples show the geographic and corporate spread from the start: Vyzag Bio Energy Fuels in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, and Verbio India in Sangrur, Punjab.

What it actually takes to sell this manure

Bulk-selling FOM/LFOM/PROM directly to farmers is not automatic just because a biogas plant exists — it runs through four regulatory gates, all traceable to a single legal chain. The Fertiliser (Control) Order, 1985 (FCO), clause 22(c), lets the Central Government name specific manufacturers for bulk/loose direct-to-farmer sale. The FCO Fourth Amendment Order, 2023 (in force 17 May 2023) waived a separate authorisation-letter requirement (clause 8(3)) for FOM/LFOM manufacturers for three years, which is what opened the door for GOBARdhan plants to enter the fertiliser market at all. Each plant then still needs to be individually named in a DA&FW Gazette notification under clause 22(c) — the seven notifications above — before it can sell in bulk rather than only through a packaged-bag marketer.

Beyond legal eligibility, plants must clear:

• Product quality — every batch needs an NABL or State-laboratory quality certificate, with the batch number on the certificate matching the batch number on the sale record.
• Operational tracking — capacity, batch size (capped under 2,000 MT), and MRP must be declared on the government's IFMS portal (dbtfert.nic.in) before any dispatch can happen.
• Bulk-sale logistics — each consignment needs three uploaded proofs (QC certificate, weighbridge receipt, photo of the loaded truck) plus full transport records, with a 40 MT vehicle-capacity cap per consignment.

Only after clearing all four gates does a plant qualify for the Market Development Assistance (MDA) subsidy: ₹1,500 per MT of FOM/LFOM/PROM sold, administered by the Department of Fertilizers. The subsidy is not automatic even then — it requires State-level verification through two pro forma certificates (B1-MDA for quantity, B2-MDA for quality), and any batch that fails the State's sample check is carved out as ineligible. The final claim is generated and e-signed through the DBT billing module on the IFMS system.

The 119 plants sit inside a much larger, much less utilised pipeline

It matters to place the 119 bulk-sale-authorised plants in their true national context, because they are a narrow, relatively mature subset of a far larger and far less mature build-out. An independent situation report on India's CBG sector, compiled July 2026 from Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell (PPAC), Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas (MoPNG) and Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) data, puts the national registered pipeline at roughly 1,150 plants as of August 2025: about 160 actually operational, roughly 244 under construction (2.78 MMSCMD of capacity), and roughly 744 that have registered but not yet started (3.58 MMSCMD). That entire 1,150-plant pipeline is itself only about 23% of the government's stated national target of 5,000 plants. The 119 GOBARdhan plants authorised for direct bulk fertiliser sale, in other words, are a mature, regulation-cleared slice of a much bigger, much earlier-stage national programme.

The state concentration in that larger national dataset corroborates the picture already built from the 119-plant bulk-sale list rather than complicating it: Uttar Pradesh (~32 operational CBG plants), Gujarat (~20) and Haryana (~17) lead the national operational count, tracking closely with UP's 28, Haryana's 13 and Gujarat's 12 plants within the 119-plant bulk-sale subset.

The more sobering national figure is capacity utilisation. Actual CBG sold to oil marketing companies in FY2024-25 was about 42,800 tonnes (roughly 79,200 tonnes cumulative since the scheme began in September 2019), against a rated capacity across the 160 operational plants implying about 323,000 tonnes/year — a utilisation rate of only around 13%, far short of the 70–85% range the situation report identifies as needed for financial soundness. Performance varies sharply by operator: struggling plants run at 30–35% utilisation, a stronger operator like IOCL reaches roughly 70%, and the best-in-class operator identified (EverEnviro) hits 100%. The report is explicit that this is an execution and utilisation problem, not a demand problem — the government's CBG Blending Obligation (1% in FY26, rising to 5% by FY29) guarantees a buyer, and OMCs are reportedly facing a severe supply shortfall against that mandate (demand estimated around 1,620 tonnes/day against supply of only 120–150 tonnes/day as of a July 2026 note) — the gas-offtake side is not the bottleneck; getting plants to run near their rated capacity is.

This same situation report independently corroborates the ₹1,500/MT MDA subsidy's importance from a second, national-sector angle rather than only the farmer-facing angle covered above: it names "by-product markets" — FOM accumulating unsold if the bio-manure market isn't developed — as one of the sector's core structural challenges, and identifies MDA-supported bio-manure sales as a lever that "materially improves returns" for CBG plants generally. The wider policy architecture behind the build-out includes SATAT (assured OMC offtake at an ex-plant price of ₹54/kg excluding GST, roughly 1,094 active Letters of Intent), the GOBARdhan/MNRE Central Financial Assistance capital subsidy (₹4 crore per 4,800 kg/day of capacity, capped at ₹10 crore), the CBO (Compressed Biogas Obligation) blending mandate itself, pipeline-connectivity and feedstock-machinery subsidies (DPI, BAM), and IREDA project financing (up to 70% of project cost at 9.75–10.75%, 10-year tenor). The CBO mandate alone is projected to pull in roughly ₹37,500 crore of investment and around 750 new projects by FY2028-29 — a genuinely large build-out, still mostly ahead of it rather than behind it.

Why the subsidy matters beyond the farmer's field

This subsidy is not incidental — it appears to be part of what keeps some CBG plants financially viable at all. Separate work on this blog's sibling research (CBG/SATAT pricing economics) found that SATAT's assured ex-plant gas price of ₹54/kg compares to spot RLNG around ₹45/kg — a real but modest premium. That analysis notes explicitly that CBG production cost "varies by feedstock... ₹54/kg does not guarantee plant viability without the fertiliser and carbon-credit legs." In other words, the FOM/LFOM revenue stream — the ₹1,500/MT MDA payment plus whatever the manure fetches on sale — is one of the legs the whole CBG-plant business model stands on, not a side benefit. That has a direct implication for bio-fertiliser supply: if the fertiliser revenue leg is what makes plants viable, then squeezing or delaying MDA payments doesn't just hurt farmers waiting on cheaper manure — it threatens the underlying gas-production economics too.

Part 2 — The Green Credit Programme and Tree Plantation

The second candidate "better nurture" runs on an entirely separate legal and administrative track: the Green Credit Programme, built around voluntary tree plantation on degraded land. Its legal basis is the Green Credit Rules, notified 12 October 2023 under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. It was announced by the Prime Minister at COP28 in Dubai (December 2023), framed around cultivating what the government calls "Pro Planet People" — individuals and institutions incentivised to take environmental action through a market-style credit mechanism rather than pure mandate.

The programme is administered by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), headquartered in Dehradun, under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). The mechanism: an eligible participant registers a plot of degraded, wasteland, or watershed land — through the relevant state forest department — and carries out tree-plantation activity on it. That activity earns tradeable "green credits," issued according to methodologies set by ICFRE as Administrator. (The exact calculation formula for how plantation activity converts into a specific number of credits was not published on the portal page checked for this article — another point where the public-facing detail runs thinner than the legal framework.)

Eligible participants span a deliberately wide net: government institutions, public-sector undertakings, NGOs, private companies, philanthropic organisations, and individuals or societies registered under the Societies Registration Act. That breadth is clearly designed to pull in corporate ESG and CSR budgets alongside government afforestation programmes — the registry portal (moefcc-gcp.in/registry/tree-plantation) has functional workflows for searching available land parcels, registering degraded forest land, watershed land or wasteland, and registering a plantation activity specifically framed for CSR/ESG use.

Part 3 — Where They Could Meet: Arid and Degraded Land

Here is the synthesis the two preceding parts point toward: bio-fertiliser and tree-credit plantation are not just two items on the same "better nurture" wishlist — they target complementary failure modes on the same kind of land. Arid and degraded parcels typically suffer from two compounding problems: depleted soil organic matter and poor water retention (the soil-biology problem bio-fertiliser is meant to address, qualitatively, by reintroducing organic material and microbial activity), and simple absence of vegetative cover (the problem tree plantation directly solves). A parcel that gets only trees planted on exhausted, biologically dead soil faces a harder establishment fight than one where organic amendment has been applied first or alongside. A parcel that gets only bio-fertiliser with no plantation stays soil-improved but unvegetated.

Geographically, the two schemes' footprints don't obviously overlap the way you'd want for direct compounding. GOBARdhan's 119 plants are concentrated in a specific set of agriculturally dense states — Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab — which is a function of where biogas feedstock (agricultural and dairy residue) is abundant, not where degraded or arid land specifically sits. Green Credit registrations, by contrast, are meant to target degraded forest land, wasteland and watershed tracts identified and registered through state forest departments, which is a different selection logic entirely.

To be explicit about what this section is and is not claiming: nothing in the sources gathered for this article shows an existing, formal linkage between GOBARdhan bio-fertiliser output and Green Credit plantation sites. No joint scheme, no MDA-eligible manure earmarked for registered degraded parcels, no cross-referenced registry. This is a genuine policy opportunity being identified here, not a program being reported on. The opportunity is straightforward to state: bio-fertiliser output from the nearest GOBARdhan plants could, in principle, be directed toward Green-Credit-registered degraded and wasteland plots to accelerate their soil recovery ahead of or alongside plantation — using an existing subsidised production stream (the MDA-backed FOM/LFOM) to feed an existing incentive-driven land-recovery registry (Green Credit). Whether that is technically, logistically, or economically sensible at scale is a separate question this article cannot answer from the sources at hand — it would need actual data on where degraded/wasteland registrations are geographically concentrated, and whether that overlaps meaningfully with GOBARdhan's plant footprint, or with a state's willingness to route subsidised manure to non-farmer, forestry-department end users.

There is also a structural complication worth naming plainly rather than glossing over, because it cuts directly against the arid-region framing this section is built on. Independent financial modelling of CBG plant economics by feedstock type finds that, at a base-case 85% utilisation with no process enhancement, only two feedstocks are currently bankable: press mud (15.0% IRR) and municipal solid waste (34.1% IRR). Cattle dung — the feedstock most naturally available in arid and semi-arid, livestock-heavy regions — is currently the least commercially viable feedstock of all, at roughly -18.6% IRR, driven by a combination of low biogas yield (about 20 kg CBG per tonne of input) and relatively high feedstock cost (around ₹1,000/tonne); agri-residue is only marginally better at around -6.0% IRR. Modest yield improvements of 3–5%, achievable through enzyme or pre-treatment technology, could in principle flip cattle dung and agri-residue toward viability, but that is presented in the source modelling as a gap still to be closed through R&D and process investment, not a solved problem today. A separate analysis using CERC tariff data adds a further constraint: converting biomass to electricity currently earns a substantially higher margin per tonne of feedstock than converting it to CBG, across all four feedstock types compared — so CBG/bio-fertiliser projects are competing for the same biomass against a financially stronger alternative use, and tend to be viable mainly where the feedstock has close to zero opportunity cost, such as press mud as sugar-mill waste with no other buyer.

Put together, this means the CBG/bio-fertiliser production model that is currently most bankable — press mud near sugar mills, municipal solid waste in urban centres — is a structural mismatch for the arid, pastoral, cattle-dung-rich regions this article's arid-regrowth framing is most interested in. The feedstock that arid regions actually have in abundance is currently the one plants are least likely to be built around. This doesn't erase the opportunity described above — FOM/LFOM output exists and can in principle reach any registered plot regardless of which feedstock produced it, and India's biogas/CBG build-out is still expanding rapidly — but it is a real constraint on how quickly bio-fertiliser supply can scale specifically toward arid and degraded-land regrowth, rather than toward wherever feedstock economics currently favour plant construction.

A Third Lever: Carbon Credits for CBG

There is a third revenue leg behind the GOBARdhan plants covered in Part 1, beyond gas sale and the FOM/LFOM manure subsidy: carbon credits. India runs a national Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), administered by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) under the Ministry of Power, built to operationalise India's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) commitment — revised in August 2022 to a 45% reduction in GHG emission intensity by 2030 from 2005 levels, following India's 2016 ratification of the Paris Agreement.

The CCTS runs two parallel mechanisms. The Compliance Mechanism is mandatory, applying government-set emission-intensity targets to nine designated energy-intensive sectors transitioning from the earlier Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme: Aluminium, Chlor-Alkali, Cement, Fertiliser, Iron & Steel, Pulp & Paper, Petrochemicals, Petroleum Refinery, and Textile — fertiliser manufacturing itself is one of the nine, which is a direct link back to the urea-production emissions this blog's earlier fertiliser piece touched on. The Offset Mechanism is voluntary and project-based, open to non-obligated entities: Phase I covers Energy, Industries, Agriculture, Waste handling, Forestry and Transport project categories; Phase II adds Fugitive Emissions, Construction, Solvent use and Carbon capture. BEE identifies sectors and sets trajectories and targets, and issues the carbon credit certificates themselves; a separate body, the Grid Controller of India, operates the registry and maintains credit accounts. Under the predecessor PAT scheme, Indian industrial units achieved documented savings of over 106 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions between 2015 and June 2024 — a scale marker for what the mechanism has delivered so far, ahead of the newer CCTS structure taking full effect.

What is better documented is why this matters for plant economics specifically. As Part 1 noted, CBG plant viability is described in sibling research on this blog as resting on multiple legs — assured gas offtake (SATAT), fertiliser by-product sale (the ₹1,500/MT MDA subsidy), and carbon-credit revenue — not gas sale alone. If carbon credits are, in practice, a real and collectable third revenue stream for CBG operators under the CCTS Offset Mechanism, that reinforces the same conclusion Part 1 reached about the FOM/LFOM subsidy: policy support beyond the gas price is not incidental to keeping these plants financially viable, it is structural. And by the same logic already applied to bio-fertiliser and Green Credit tree plantation, a third income stream that depends on project registration, methodology approval and credit issuance is only as strong as the transparency of its own uptake data — which, on the evidence gathered here, is not yet publicly verifiable for CBG projects specifically.

Closing: How Far Is "Better Nurture" From Actually Correcting Course

The "Nature Versus Nurture" article closed on a diagnosis: India's crop-growth "nature" story has been running on an imported, gas-priced, soil-degrading "nurture" for decades. Bio-fertiliser and tree-credit plantation are real, if partial, candidate corrections — 119 authorised plants with a functioning subsidy mechanism on one side, a legally grounded but data-opaque land-recovery registry on the other. Both are genuinely operating, not merely announced.

But scale is the honest caveat neither section above can paper over. 119 plants and an unquantified acreage of tree plantation are small relative to a national fertiliser system built around tens of millions of tonnes of urea consumption annually and decades of accumulated soil degradation. Nothing in the sources compiled here — plant counts, subsidy mechanics, notification dates — quantifies what fraction of India's degraded or urea-dependent farmland either scheme is currently reaching. That is the honest limit of what this article can claim.

What would it take for this to become a real correction rather than a promising pilot? Three things, based on what's documented and what's missing: first, verified uptake data — actual FOM/LFOM/PROM production and application volumes from the 119 plants, and populated dashboard figures from the Green Credit registry, so outside observers can judge trajectory rather than intent. Second, an actual cross-scheme linkage — some documented mechanism connecting GOBARdhan output to Green-Credit-registered degraded parcels, rather than the two schemes running as parallel, non-communicating tracks. Third, MDA-type incentives scaled and specifically targeted at arid and degraded parcels, rather than the current subsidy structure which pays out per tonne sold regardless of where the manure ends up. Until those three things show up in the public record, bio-fertiliser and green credits are best read as what they currently are: a real but early-stage answer to the "better nurture" question, not yet the correction the soil-degradation diagnosis calls for.

Sources

• DA&FW Gazette Notification I, 14 Nov 2023, S.O. 4918(E) — 27 GOBARdhan plants authorised for bulk FOM/LFOM sale under FCO clause 22(c).
• DA&FW Gazette Notification II, 15 Mar 2024, S.O. 1366(E) — 14 plants.
• DA&FW Gazette Notification III, 2 Sep 2024, S.O. 3723(E) — 21 plants.
• DA&FW Gazette Notification IV, 6 Mar 2025, S.O. 1102(E) (plus S.O. 1101(E) amendment) — 7 plants.
• DA&FW Gazette Notification V, 8 Jul 2025, S.O. 3042(E) — 17 plants.
• DA&FW Gazette Notification VI, 16 Dec 2025, S.O. 5836(E) — 20 plants.
• DA&FW Gazette Notification VII, 25 Feb 2026, S.O. 1018(E) — 13 plants. (Total: 119 across all seven notifications.)
• Fertiliser (Control) Order, 1985, clause 22(c); FCO Fourth Amendment Order, 2023 (in force 17 May 2023).
• Department of Fertilizers, Market Development Assistance (MDA) scheme — ₹1,500/MT on FOM/LFOM/PROM from registered BG/CBG plants; IFMS portal (dbtfert.nic.in) operational and bulk-sale conditions.
• GOBARdhan Unified Registration Portal, gobardhan.sbm.gov.in / gobardhan.eil.co.in ("Important Circular" page — source of the seven notification PDFs).
• Green Credit Rules, notified 12 October 2023 under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
• Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), Dehradun — Administrator of the Green Credit Programme, under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
• Green Credit Programme registry portal, moefcc-gcp.in/registry/tree-plantation — checked directly for this article; live uptake dashboard fields unpopulated at time of check.
• Local scheme catalogue cross-check (digital-twin-for-ipa research repository) confirming Green Credit Programme registration status as open/active on moefcc-gcp.in.
• CBG/SATAT pricing economics (omc-retail-profitability-model research repository) — SATAT assured ex-plant CBG price (₹54/kg) vs spot RLNG (~₹45/kg), and the point that fertiliser (FOM/LFOM) and carbon-credit revenue underpin CBG plant economic viability.
• India's CBG Sector — Situation Report, compiled July 2026 from PPAC/MoPNG/PNGRB data — national plant pipeline, capacity utilisation, CBO/SATAT/GOBARdhan-CFA/DPI/BAM/IREDA policy architecture.
• CBG Enzyme & Efficiency Analysis, July 2026 — feedstock-level IRR comparison (press mud, MSW, agri-residue, cattle dung) and enzyme/pre-treatment yield-improvement potential.
• CBG 5TPD Combined Feedstock Strategy, July 2026 — feedstock viability and cost modelling underlying the cattle-dung IRR figures.
• CBG vs Power: Opportunity Cost Analysis, July 2026 (CERC FY2025-26 tariff data) — biomass-to-power vs biomass-to-CBG margin comparison across feedstock types.
• CBG Customer Willingness-to-Pay, July 2026 — OMC demand-supply shortfall against the CBO blending mandate.
• Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) overview, beeindia.gov.in — compliance/offset mechanism structure, sector lists, and PAT-scheme savings record (106+ MT CO2e, 2015–Jun 2024).

This analysis is based on publicly available government data and primary-source documents cited in the article above. It is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, or policy advice.

GOBARdhan's biogas plants are one leg of a broader biofuels policy cluster: this blog's coverage of the National Circular Bioenergy Scheme and of India's ethanol overcapacity and the alcohol-to-jet SAF pathway both draw on the same underlying question — whether India's agricultural and livestock residue base can supply several competing biofuel programmes at once.

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.