Nitrogenous fertilizers are considered an essential input for productive agriculture and the factor highly responsible for higher biomass production. Unfortunately, intensive mineral fertilization brings tremendous changes in soil fertility and productivity, but productivity decreases rapidly in cereal-based cropping systems or without legumes. The excessive use of mineral nitrogenous fertilizers reported an increase in potential health hazards and environmental problems such as groundwater contamination, eutrophication, acid rain, the greenhouse effect, and methemoglobinemia in humans. With future applications’ elevated use and prognosis, this problem may expand to several folds in the approaching decades. Large consumption of defiled water or food with higher concentrations of nitrates (according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the permissible limit is 7 mg.kg
−1
body weight per day) causes severe infant diseases such as Blue Baby Syndrome, respiratory ailments, gastric cancer, birth malformation and other health problems which earlier were rarely explained or explored worldwide. The unsustainable agronomic practices resulted in our soil being stripped of natural health and blind dependency on mineral fertilizers, ultimately leading to poor human and environmental health. There is an immediate need for new technologies related to farming systems to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in view of changing climate. Various sustainable practices such as applying organic manures, precision N management, Soil Test Crop Response (STCR) approach, and nitrogen (N) inhibitors hold tremendous potential to reduce the ill effects of nitrates and secure the food chain if adopted on a large scale.