Soil Health Card Scheme

The Programme of “Mission Soil Health Card” has been launched by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India on 19-02-2015, for implementation from the year 2015-16, under the scheme “National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture” (NMSA), with an aim to diagnose soil fertility related constrains with standardized procedures for sampling uniformly across the states and analysis and design Taluk / Block level fertilizer recommendations in targeted districts. It will also develop and promote soil test based nutrient management in the districts for enhancing nutrient use efficiency, and also helps to build capacities of district and state level staff and of progressive farmers for promotion of nutrient management practices. Under this scheme Soil Health card will be issued to all the farmers in this country once in 2 years.

In Tamil Nadu, it is proposed to implement the programme of Mission Soil Health Card, as a first cycle from 2015-16 to 2016-17 and second cycle from 2017 – 2018 to 2018 – 2019 by following grid soil sampling technique

1. Irrigated field- One Grid = 2.5 Ha.,and 1 sample in random (No. of farmers may vary from 1 to 10)
2. Rainfed area – one Grid = 10 ha, and 1 sample in random (No. of farmers may vary from 1 to 10) throughout the State.

Target fixed for Krishnagiri District 37340 samples for both the cycles In Krishnagiri District to implement the programme the District Level Executive Committee had formed on 28.04.2015 under the Chairmanship of District Collector, District Joint Director of Agriculture as Member secretary, District Agricultural Officers / Horticultural Officers as Members and representatives of Line Department, State Agricultural University/ Krishi Vigyan Kendra as expert members is to be formed and will be responsible for carrying forward the objective of the scheme for project formulation, implementation and monitoring.

As per the instructions of the Government of India, every year December- 5th has been observed as “World Soil Health Day”, and a function is celebrated in our district on that day to create awareness to the farmers regarding the soil health. As a large number of famers gather on the occasion, it is being utilized for the distribution of Soil Health Cards to the farmers.