Soil Health Security in India: Insights from Soil Health Card Data

This study has made an attempt to assess the soil nutritional status of various states in India using secondary data collected from the Soil Health Card portal. The study finds that due to the unbalanced use of micro and macro fertilizers, the health of the soil is continuously deteriorating across the states and ecological regions. Farmers are deliberately using chemical fertilizers in the states, where insured irrigation is available. This not only deteriorating soil health but also increasing input cost and causing long chronical diseases. Lack of awareness also a vital reason behind the unbalanced use of fertilizers. The farmer is injecting the same amount of fertilizers in the soil as they injected 20 years ago. However, soil chemical property has been changed, when land is either converted from irrigated to rainfed or rainfed to irrigate. Therefore, this study recommends that there is a need of adopting a holistic approach to match the soil fertilizer demand with supply.