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On the occasion of World Soil Day, Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Shri Radha Mohan Singh revealed that the objective of SHC is to provide information about the Soil Health to 120 million farm holdings in the country. The Agriculture Minister stated it while addressing farmers on the occasion of World Soil Day in Jhajjar, Haryana today. It is worth mentioning that every year World Soil Day is celebrated on 5th December. In India, Soil Health Card scheme was launched in February 2015 in Rajasthan. The Minister said that Soil Health Card mobile App has been launched today to help the farmers. The app will benefit field-level workers as it will automatically capture GIS coordinates while registering sample details at the time of sample collection in the field and indicate the location from where the sample has been collected.
This app works like other Geotagging apps developed for the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. The app contains farmers’ details including name, Aadhaar card number, mobile number, gender, address, crop details, etc.
Shri Singh said that SHC informs farmers about nutrients status of the soils along with the recommendation on appropriate dosage of nutrients to improve soil health and fertility. A farm will get the soil card once in every 2 years so that nutrients deficiency can be regularly detected and improved. He said that the imbalanced use of fertilizers damages the fields and reduces production. The Minister informed that in the first phase (2015-17) 100 million SHCs have been distributed so far. The aim of the Ministry is to provide SHC to all 120 million farm holdings by December, 2017. The second phase began on May 1, 2017, and will continue for the year 2017 to 2019.