New Soil Health Card Scheme

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Syllabus: Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum support prices; Public Distribution System- objectives, functioning, limitations, revamping; issues of buffer stocks and food security; Technology missions; economics of animal-rearing.

Context

Government of India has made some technological interventions in New Soil Health Card Scheme.

Past

• 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.

Soil Health Card Scheme

• It 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.