- World Soil Day was observed on 5th December, 2018.
- The objective of the day is to focus attention on the importance of healthy soil and advocating for the sustainable management of soil resources.
- Theme: The theme for this year’s World Soil Day is – ‘Be the Solution to Soil Pollution’.
- According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Soil holds three times as much carbon as the atmosphere and can help meet the challenges of a changing climate.
- It said, 815 million people are food insecure and 2 billion people are nutritionally insecure, but it can be mitigated through soil.
- 95 per cent of food comes from soil and 33 per cent of the global soils are already degraded.
- The Centre has launched nationwide Soil Health Card Scheme to take care of Soil Health for the first time in a uniform manner to evaluate the soil fertility across the country.
- According to Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, over 15 crore Soil Health Cards have been distributed to the farmers across the country.
- Soil health card provides information to the farmers on fertility status of their soil and enables them to apply soil health card based recommended dosages of fertilizers including micro-nutrients, bio-fertilizers, manures as well as soil ameliorants.
- It is helpful in checking the declining fertility of agriculture land and improve the fertility of soils to increase productivity besides enhancing farmers income.
