6 Crore Soil Health Cards Distributed

The Government has introduced Soil Health Card (SHC) Scheme with an aim to provide soil health cards to all farm holdings across the country once in a cycle of two years. Uniform norms of 10 hectares for rainfed areas and 2.5 hectare for irrigated areas constitute the grid for soil sample collection. Uniform norms of testing 12 parameters is followed namely major nutrients (N, P, K), secondary nutrients (S), micro-nutrients (Fe, Zn, Cu, Mn & B) and others (pH, EC & OC). The State Government through its Department of Agriculture is nodal agency to issue soil health card to farmers.
So far against the target of 14 crore cards distribution, 6 crore cards have been distributed and remaining cards are under printing. Adequate funds have been released to all States, funds amounting to Rs 23.89 crore, Rs 96.44 crore and Rs 126.47 crore have been released during 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 respectively under the scheme.
This information was given by the Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Shri Parshottam Rupala, in reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.