Topics Soil health | farmers | Agriculture
BS Web Team | New Delhi Last Updated at June 28, 2022 07:58 IST
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Farmers across India could be sometimes unsure of crops they should grow for maximum yield, or they need to test soil quality.
To assist them, the government has the 'Soil Health Card'. The SHC scheme, with the tagline "Swasth Dhara Khet Hara", is under the Ministry of Agriculture and promoted by the Department of Agriculture and Co-operation. What is a soil health card?
A soil health card provides information on the nutrient status of soil, along with recommendations on the dosage of nutrients to be utilised for improving its fertility and health.
It is printed document issued to farmers once in three years for their land holdings. Farmers can take a printout of the card from the SHC portal, which has a database of all harvesting seasons and is available in 21 languages.
All farmers in India are eligible for the SHC scheme. They must contact the agriculture department in their region for more information.
The government launched the SHC scheme as an initiative to curb the overuse of urea or nitrogenous fertilisers causing a deficiency of nutrients in soil like potassium, nitrogen, sulphur, zinc, boron, copper and phosphorus.
Farmers can assess and raise the soil and crop productivity using key inputs from the card that carries crop-wise recommendations and other physical parameters of fertilisers and nutrients required for farm lands. With the help of the SHC, farmers can improve integrated nutrient management by judiciously using the soil nutrients. The card serves as a step-by-step process to address nutritional deficiencies in soil management practices.
The soil health card helps in reducing the cost of production and determining changes in soil health affected by land management.
The SHC carries corrective measures that farmers are required to adopt for the sustenance of a better crop yield.
It is a field-specific report that helps the farmers to receive crop-wise recommendations of required fertilizers and nutrients in each type of soil.
SHC offers two sets of fertiliser recommendations for six crops, including recommendations for organic manures.
The Soil Health Card Day commemorates the day when the SHC scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 19, 2015 at Suratgarh in Rajasthan. The Ministry of Agriculture introduced the SHC scheme on December 5, 2015.
A soil health card includes the nutrient status of soil with respect to 12 nutrients of farm holdings: pH, Nitrogen (N), Potassium (K), Sulphur (S), Phosphorus (P), Zinc (Zn), Electrical Conductivity (EC), Manganese (Mn), Copper (Cu), Organic Carbon (OC), Boron (B), Iron (Fe). Based on this, the SHC will also include fertilizer recommendations and soil amendments required for the farm land.
A soil health card contains soil health indicators and descriptive concepts based on farmers' knowledge of local natural resources and practical experience. Soil health indicators on the SHC card can be understood without the help of laboratory or technical equipment.
National Informatics Center (NIC) produces uniform soil health cards through its web portal (soilhealth.dac.gov.in) which has four modules:
Soil samples are to be divided between a grid of 2.5 ha in the rain-fed area and 10 ha in the irrigated area with the help of revenue maps and GPS tools. The state government collects samples and involves the students of local agriculture and science colleges.
A trained person collects the soil samples from a depth of 15-20 cm by cutting the soil in a 'V' shape and then the selected sample is sent to a soil test laboratory for analysis. The soil samples are taken twice a year, after harvesting seasons of Rabi and Kharif crops, respectively.
State Governments are provided with an amount of Rs 190 per soil sample that covers the cost of collection, testing, generation and distribution of a soil health card to the farmer.
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