New Delhi (The Hawk): 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.
Now, Government of India has made some technological interventions in New Soil Health Card Scheme. 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 Cards are generated on revamped portal. 56 Training sessions to States have been arranged for the new system.
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 Guideline of Village Level Soil Testing Labs (VLSTLs) has been issued on 22.06.2023. 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).
As per the procedure, an entrepreneur can submit the application along with requisite qualification certificate, PAN Card, Aadhar Card to the office of Deputy Director/District Agriculture Officer. Training of VLSTLs on soil sampling, testing, generation of soil health card is organized by manufacturers and state government. VLSTLs further educate farmers about fertilizer recommendation and crop recommendation.
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. This information was given by the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.
