Punjab becomes first state to issue soil health cards to all farmers

Chandigarh, May 12, 2015: Punjab Agriculture Department today launched an ambitious pan-state program to monitor the soil health of every farm in the state by issuing them personalised soil health card keeping in view the over exploitation of soil during last 20 years.

Disclosing this here today Agriculture Minister Jathedar Tota Singh said that every district has been assigned one mobile soil testing lab that would take soil sample from every farm and issue a digitalised soil health card with centralised data of central server of the department. He said that constant monitoring of health profile of various farms in the state was imperative keeping in view over exploitation of soil after the advent of green revolution in the state. He said that it was now necessary to maintain the health structure of soil and educating the farmers to use right quantity of fertilisers to prevent soil becoming arid.

Giving the details of the project the Agriculture Minister said that he was personally monitoring this ambitious project after micro and macro profile of soil structure, the Punjab Government would come out with comprehensive cropping and agriculture diversification plan keeping in view the soil content of that area. He said that agriculture department has been told to launch educative campaign to inform farmers regarding compatibility of particular soil with particular crop,

All agriculture extension officers have been issued instructions to coordinate with Soil Conservation department to make this campaign a great success.