Socio-economic impact of Soil Health Card scheme in the state of Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

The recent scheme of soil health card (SHC) launched by the Government of India on 19th of February 2015 marking the International Year of Soil stands apart with the aim to correct the indiscriminate use of chemical nutrients at the farm sites by soil testing and giving crop wise recommendations for every three years (PIB 2021). The background of India’s soil testing program began in 1955–1956 with the establishment of 16 soil testing laboratories under the Indo-US Operational Agreement for the Determination of Soil Fertility and Fertilizer Use. The program benefited from a substantial revival in the 11th five-year plan (2007–2012), when the National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility was launched with an outlay of ₹429.85 crores to set up new laboratories and strengthen existing laboratories with micronutrient testing facilities (Fishman et al. 2016). Later on, the program was expanded further in the 12th five-year plan (2012–2017), when all states adopted the system of preparing and issuing soil analysis-based Soil Health Cards (SHC) to farmers along with associated fertilizer use recommendations. Thus, the SHC scheme was launched across all the states of India since 2015 and Andhra Pradesh was one of the pioneering states to go for full adoption of the scheme with the active involvement of the state machinery. As on March 2020, the total SHC issued in the state of Andhra Pradesh is found to be 6967162. Thus from the SHC MIS portal, it is seen that the state meets 100% of its SHC target distribution for the cycle of 2018–20.