Soil Health Card Scheme

Why is in news? Government of India has made some technological interventions in New Soil Health Card Scheme

Soil Health Card (SHC) is a scheme promoted by the Department of Agriculture & Co-operation under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare.

Under Soil Health Cards (SHCs) Scheme introduced in the year 2014-15, a massive programme of soil sampling, testing and generation of SHCs was launched to assist State Governments to issue soil health cards to all farmers in the country.

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.

SHC is a printed report that a farmer will be handed over for each of his holdings.

It will contain the status of his 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 this, the SHC will also indicate fertilizer recommendations and soil amendment required for the farm.

The card will contain an advisory based on the soil nutrient status of a farmer’s holding.

It will show recommendations on dosage of different nutrients needed. Further, it will advise the farmer on the fertilizers and their quantities he should apply, and also the soil amendments that he should undertake, so as to realize optimal yields.

The card will be made available once in a cycle of 2 years, which will indicate the status of soil health of a farmer’s holding for that particular period. The SHC given in the next cycle of 2 years will be able to record the changes in the soil health for that subsequent period.

Technological interventions taken by the Government:

The Soil Health Card portal has been revamped and integrated with a Geographic Information System (GIS) system so that all the test results are captured and seen on a map.

To make the implementation/monitoring of the scheme smooth and to facilitate farmers an easy access to his soil health card, the mobile application has been made robust with the additional features i.e. restrict the sample collection region for the Village Level Entrepreneur/Operator collecting the soil samples, auto selection of the latitude and longitude of the location, generation of a QR code to link with the sample and test results of all samples directly on the portal from the geo-mapped labs, without any manual intervention.

The new system has already been rolled out from April, 2023 and Samples are collected through mobile application.

Soil Health Card scheme has been merged in Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) cafeteria scheme as its one component under name ‘Soil Health & Fertility’ from the year 2022-23.

The Village Level Soil Testing Labs (VLSTLs) can be set up by individual entrepreneurs i.e. rural youth and community based entrepreneurs i.e. Self Help Groups (SHGs), Schools, Agriculture Universities etc.

The beneficiary/village level entrepreneur should be a youth whose age should not be below 18 years and should not be more than 27 years.

Self Help Groups, Farmers Producers Organisation (FPO) can also be enrolled as VLSTL. Eligibility of enrollment of these groups is decided by District Level Executive Committee (DLEC).

Detail Soil Mapping at 1:10000 scale is undertaken using high resolution satellite data and field survey/ ground data in the priority areas of the country by Soil & Land Use Survey of India, DA&FW. This Soil Resource Information is a geo-spatial data in digital format and generated separately from SHC.