Soil Health Cards:Limitations and Ways to Fix the Loopholes

The Government of India had initiated the Soil Health Card (SHC) Scheme in February 2015 to promote balanced ferti-lization to protect soil health and for sustainable agriculture. SHC is a field-specific detailed report of soil fertility status and other important soil parame-ters that affect crop productivity. It is similar to a physician’s prescription, where the health status of the soil is pro-vided and recommendations are made to the farmers accordingly. Details in a SHC includes 12 important parameters such as pH, electrical conductivity (EC), organic carbon, macro-nutrients like N, P and K, secondary nutrients like sulphur and micronutrients such as zinc, iron, manganese, copper and boron¹ .