The Soil Health Card Day will be observed on February 19, 2020. It commemorates the day Soil Health Card Scheme was launched by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on February 19, 2015 at Suratgarh, Rajasthan. Coincidentally, the International Year of Soils was celebrated the same year.
About Soil Health Card (SHC) scheme
The objectives of the Soil Health Card (SHC) scheme are to issue soil health cards to farmers every two years so as to provide a basis to address nutritional deficiencies in fertilization practices.
Soil testing is developed to promote soil test based on nutrient management. Soil testing reduces cultivation cost by application of right quantity of fertilizer.
It ensures additional income to farmers by increase in yields and it also promotes sustainable farming.
The scheme has been introduced to assist State Governments to issue SHCs to all farmers in the country.
SHC provides information to farmers on nutrient status of their soil along with recommendation on appropriate dosage of nutrients to be applied for improving soil health and its fertility.
Deterioration of soil chemical, physical and biological health is considered as one of the reasons for stagnation of agricultural productivity in India.
Challenges
The challenges are enormous: Indian soils are working with negative nutrient balance to the tune of 12-14 million tons per year and the negative balance is likely to increase in future even after using the full potential of fertilizer industry.
The Nutrient deficiency in India is in the order of: 95, 94, 48, 25, 41, 20, 14, 8 and 6% for N, P, K, S, Zn, B, Fe, Mn and Cu respectively.
Nutrient use efficiency
The limiting nutrients do not allow the full expression of other nutrients, lower the fertilizer response and crop productivity.
Improving fertilizer/nutrient use efficiency is important rather than applying more fertilizer in Indian agriculture.
Nutrient use efficiency presently is low ranging from 30-50% (Nitrogen), 15-20% (Phosphorus), 60-70% (Potassium), 8-10% (Sulphur) and 1-2% (micronutrients).
Background
The Government under the component of Soil Health Management of National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) is promoting soil test based balanced and integrated nutrient management in the country through setting up/strengthening of soil testing laboratories, establishment of bio-fertilizer and compost unit, use of micronutrients, trainings and demonstrations on balanced use of fertilizers etc.
SHC scheme was launched during 2015 to evaluate soil fertility of every farm holdings across the country in every two years. During cycle –I (2015-17), 10.74 crore Soil Health Cards and during cycle – II (2017-19), 11.74 crore Soil Health Cards have been distributed to farmers. The Government has spent more than Rs.700 crores on the SHC scheme since its launch five years ago.
So far 429 new static Soil Testing Labs (STLs), 102 new mobile STLs, 8752 mini STLs and 1562 village level STLs have been sanctioned under the scheme since 2014-15. Out of these sanctioned labs, 129 new static Soil Testing Labs (STLs), 86 new mobile STLs, 6498 mini STLs and 179 village level STLs are already established.
The Government is also implementing the Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) scheme and promoting customized and fortified fertilizers for balanced use of fertilizers. The recommended subsidy rates (in Rs./Kg) fixed during the year 2019-20 for N, P, K & S are Rs.18.901, 15.216, 11.124 and 3.562 respectively. In order to overcome the deficiency of micronutrients in soil and to encourage their application along with primary nutrients, additional subsidy on Boron and Zinc has also been provided @ Rs.300/- and Rs.500/- per tonne respectively.
So far, 21 fertilizers have been brought under the NBS scheme. Presently, 35 customized and 25 fortified fertilizers notified by the Government are in use.
During 2019-20, a pilot project ‘Development of Model Villages’ has been taken up where soil samples collection has been taken up at individual farm holding with farmer’s participation instead of sample collection at grids.
Under the pilot project, one village per block is adopted for holding based soil testing and organization of larger number of demonstrations up to a maximum number of 50 demonstrations (1 ha each) for each adopted village.
