TAD News Desk, New Delhi: Study reveals the benefit of soil health card in increasing farm income by up to 30,000 per acre by cutting down production cost, depending on the crop.
NPC (National productivity council) conducted the study which surveyed soil of 76 districts in 19 states at 170 soil testing labs and of 1,700 cultivators, which was released at the completion of five years of the scheme launched earlier by the government.
Soil health card records and analyze the nutrients present in the soil and then recommends the cultivators of the number of nutrients to be provided in the field to maximize productivity and increase the fertility of the soil.
“In absence of the soil health cards, it was acknowledged by the growers that adequate quantity of fertilizers & micro-nutrients were not being applied by them earlier & this had affected the output of crops,” noted the study.
It explained how the farmer’s income would increase by illustrating that, “Rs 25,000 to 30,000/acre increase in income from tur; around Rs 25,000 /acre from sunflower; Rs 12,000 / acre from cotton; Rs 10,000 /acre from groundnut; Rs 4,500/acre from paddy & Rs 3,000/acre from potato.”
Cultivation cost was greatly reduced with the help of soil card which recommended the kind of fertilizers and amount of the same to be used, for example, that of nitrogen fertilizers.
Cultivation cost of rice reduced by 25-30 percent after saving 20kg of urea per acre and that of pulses by 10-15 percent which saved around 10kg of urea per acre. In case of oilseeds, the saving was 9kg per acre in sunflower, 23kg per acre in groundnut, 30kg per acre in castor, thereby reducing cultivation cost by 10-15 percent. Cash crops recorded reduction by 25 percent which saved 35kg per acre of fertilizers, and for potato it was 46 kg per acre of fertilizers saved.
The study further found that appropriate amounts of fertilizers maximize productivity, where wheat and jowar saw 10-15 percent rise in production and paddy recorded 10-20 percent rise.
Source – Krishi Jagran
