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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Major part of Indian economy is contributed by agriculture and its allied sector. Around 56 per cent of population directly or indirectly depends upon agriculture. The GDP contribution of the agriculture and allied sector is 17.2 per cent, but this sector is facing many challenges to flourish. Out of these challenges lesser crop productivity and inefficient use of fertilizers are the main challenges faced by Indian farmers. Till now, fertilizer recommendations for different crops are made on the basis of agronomical practices and not on the soil test basis. This has led to nutritional deficiencies and decrease in soil fertility in some parts of the country. Hence, to improve the soil health and boost productivity it has become necessary to nurture the soil. In the wake of this, Government has launched the soil health card scheme in February, 2015 to take care of soil health in a uniform pattern for the first time in order to evaluate the soil fertility across the country by the Government of India in cooperation with state governments. This study was an attempt to analyze the constraints being faced by the farmers in the adoption of Soil Health Card Scheme (SHCs). The present study was conducted in Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan state which was selected purposely. The Sri Ganganagar district consists of nine tehsils, Out of these, three tehsils namely Padampur, Sadulshahar and Karanpur were selected purposely for the present investigation on the basis of highest number of registered farmers under SHCs. The proportionate random sampling method was used to select the registered farmers and they were called as beneficiary of Soil Health Card scheme because they have benefited under Soil Health Card Scheme. Further, equal number of non-beneficiary respondents from same tehsils were also selected randomly who have not benefited under Soil Health Card scheme and they were called as non-beneficiary respondents. Thus, total 120 respondents i.e. 60 beneficiary and 60 non-beneficiary respondents were selected from selected tehsils for the present investigation. The findings of the study revealed that the most important constraints being faced by the respondents in the adoption of Soil Health Card scheme were “lack of knowledge about the importance of micronutrients”, “lack of mobile soil testing vans”, “unavailability of micronutrient in market” and “lack of motivation”.