Soil Health Card Scheme
"Swasth Dharaa, Khet Haraa." - Healthy Earth, Green Farm
The Government of India launched Soil Health Card Scheme on February 19, 2015. Under the scheme, the government issues soil cards to farmers which carries crop-wise recommendations of nutrients and fertilizers required for individual farms thus helping farmers to improve productivity through proper use of inputs.
Soil Health Card (SHC) is a Government of India initiative promoted by the Department of Agriculture & Co-operation under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. The Scheme is being implemented through the Department of Agriculture of all the State and Union Territory Governments.
The scheme aims at promoting soil test based and balanced use of fertilizers to enable farmers to achieve higher yields at lower cost. The main objective of the scheme is to make the growers aware of the appropriate dosage of nutrients for the concerned crop depending on the quality of soil.It is believed that imbalanced use of fertilizers damages the fields and reduces production.
Many farmers in India do not know which types of crops they should grow to get maximum yield. Basically, they are ignorant about the quality and the type of their soil. While they might know from their experience what crops grow and what crops fail but they would still not know what interventions they can make to improve the conditions of their soil and optimize crop yield.Therefore, Soil Health Card Scheme is very beneficial for farmers in India.
Under the Scheme, Soil samples are tested in various testing labs across the country followed by expert analysis of the strength and weaknesses of the soil and suggested measures to overcome the deficiencies. The soil test result and suggestion are displayed on the cards issued to the farmers.
On the occasion of World Soil Day on December 5, 2017, Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh launched Soil Health Card Mobile App to help the farmers.
The app is aimed at benefitting field-level workers as it automatically captures GIS coordinates while registering sample details at the time of sample collection in the field and indicates the location from where the sample has been collected.
This app works like other Geo tagging apps developed for the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. The app contains farmers’ details including name, Aadhaar card number, mobile number, gender,address etc.
Key Features
- The scheme aims at covering all farmers in the country
- It is pan-India initiative, covering all parts of the country
- It is a Report Card containing details about the soil of a particular farm
- The soil card is issued to a farm once in 3 years
What is a Soil Health Card?
SHC is a printed report that a farmer can obtain for each of his holdings. The card contains the status of the soil with respect to 12 parameters, namely N,P,K (Macro-nutrients); S (Secondary- nutrient); Zn, Fe, Cu, Mn, Bo (Micro – nutrients); and pH, EC, OC (Physical parameters). Based on the available soil information, the SHC also contains an advisory on the recommended nutrients and fertilizer dosage and soil correction measures required for realizing optimal yields.
Soil Health Card Scheme
The following number of cards have been issued to farmers:
I. Cycle-I (2015 to 2017) – 10.74 crore
II. Cycle-II (2017 to 2019)- 11.97 crore
III. Model Village Programme (2019-20)- 19.64 lakh
For more information on the Scheme, please visit the National Portal of the Soil Health Card
1. https://soilhealth.dac.gov.in/