Soil Health Cards: Method for Improving soil Health : Daily Current Affairs

Relevance: GS-3: Technology missions in Agriculture.Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.

Key phrases: Soil health card, Department of Agriculture & Co-operation, N, P, K, Secondary- nutrient, Micronutrients, once every 3 years.

Why in News?

Government distributes over 23 crore soil health cards to farmers so far.

What is Soil Health Cards?

Soil health card 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.
Soil Health Card (SHC) scheme was launched by the Government of India in 2015 and is endorsed by the Department of Agriculture & Co-operation under the Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Ministry.
Soil Health Card Scheme is very helpful for the farmers of the country. There are many farmers in India who do not know which types of crops should be grown to get more yield. Mainly, they do not know about the quality and the type of soil of their land.
Soil Health Card is basically a printed report that a farmer is given for all his land or holdings. It contains the status of soil considering 12 parameters - N, P, K (Macro-nutrients), S (Secondary- nutrient), Zn, Fe, Cu, Mn, Bo (Micronutrients), and pH, EC, OC. Based on all this, the Soil Health Card will also specify fertilizer recommendations and soil changes required for the farm.
The SHC will be made available once every 3 years to the farmers and this will indicate the status of soil health of his land for that particular period.

What are the advantages of the Soil Health Card?

There are many benefits of having a Soil Health Card and the farmer needs to understand it:

It reduces the cost of crop cultivation: Site and crop-specific recommendations cut down the cost of excessive unwanted fertilizer use.
It increases farm income: Balanced judicious management of nutrients will reduce the cost and result in greater net gain.
Increased crop productivity is achieved: When the soil stays in good health enriched with optimum nutrients required for crop growth, boosted productivity is ensured.
Improvement in soil health is ensured: Proper management helps in bridging the nutrients gap, thereby ensuring good soil health.
The soil health card scheme will properly examine the farmer’s soil and accordingly give them a formatted report so that they can decide upon which types of crops to be cultivated for more income.
Under the scheme, the government will also employ professionals to help the farmers in adopting remedial measures.
With the help of the Soil Health Card Scheme, the farmers can plan the future of their crops as well as land.

Limitations in the successful implementation of the SHC Scheme:

Limitations in the successful implementation of the SHC Scheme Even in the best of plans/programmes, certain loopholes do exist. The SHC Scheme runs on a large scale, but this will not be sufficient if precision, honesty and devotion are lacking. The problems encountered are the following.

First and foremost, if the farmers are unaware of the importance of SHCs, then it is just like a piece of paper generating garbage. Awareness should be created among them about the importance of site specific nutrients management. As compelling farmers to forceful adoption is not an alternative, they have to be made aware of the consequences of soil mismanagement and see prominent evidences. They should be informed about the ill effects of excessive fertilization, gradual decrease in soil fertility status, and deteriorating soil health which ultimately hampers agricultural production resulting in barren soil.
Soil sampling is the most important step in soil testing. If the soil is not sampled properly, then the test report generated using this sample will not represent the nutrient status of the whole field. The entire recommendations will change accordingly, resulting in erroneous management practices. So, training at the farmers’ level is necessary to make the Scheme successful.
In the Indian scenario, the demand is high whereas resources are limited which causes delay and non-uniformity in report generation. Meagre infrastructure, and scarcity of resources and manpower at times are a hindrance in achieving the goals in the limited time period.
Lack of specified guidelines brings non-uniformity in the results, leading to improper data compilation at a larger scale.
Once the report is generated, distribution is another herculean task. After reaching the farmers, personal verification shows that most of the time it gets treasured with them without knowing its meaning, following the recommendation is yet another story.
Lack of an organized regulatory and monitoring body brings a certain degree of anomaly in the Scheme in terms of successful implementation. Monitoring at each step of SHC generation will help maintain precision, authentication and validation in the report. Unless these loopholes are fixed on time, this Scheme will not be successful. Massive efforts are needed for the smooth running of the SHC Scheme to get the desired benefits.

Way Forward:

The SHC Scheme is an ambitious project for sustaining soil health and getting worthwhile returns, but there is always scope for improvement in every aspect of it.
To reduce cost, maintain precision and improve quality, the Scheme can further be improvized in terms of frequency of soil testing, incorporating the most important parameters in it, reduction in the number of sampling sites, recommendations based on climate suitability and locally available resources, development of mini kits for on-farm assessment of soil health status and community approach in soil testing is needed.
Development of soil variograms can reduce money and manpower, and increase the relevance of recommendations to farmers.
According to farmers, the SHC Scheme is too scientific. For example, terms like ‘pH’ or ‘EC’ are cryptic to many of them. So, a modified Scheme describing these parameters in local language will be easier to grasp.
To restore and maintain soil health, SHCs will prove to be one of the most important tools not only for guiding stakeholders towards sustainable agriculture, but also indirectly benefitting the flora and fauna to flourish naturally in healthy soils. Striving for balance and sustainability requires long-term dedicated efforts. So periodic improvisation will be needed depending upon the feedback received. The SHC Scheme should now gear up for proper mainstreaming of resources, funds and efforts.

Source: News on Air

Mains Question:

Q. What is soil health card scheme? Discuss the role of soil health card in improving the soil fertility in India. Critically Analyse. (250words).