A Study on Farmers’ Perception on Soil Health Card in Rangareddy District of Telangana State

Abstract

Agriculture is the backbone of Indian economy and primary source of income of larger part of Indian population. In view of this, Global soil partnership was conducted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization at its headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 7 to 9 September 2011. With this, Government of India had launched the Soil Health Card Scheme in 2015. The scheme main objective is to distribute soil health cards (SHCs) to each farmer in the country with advanced technologies such as GPS-enabled tablets and mass testing, along with better fertilizer subsidy policies. The soil samples were tested in laboratories across the India. Government conducted soil testing and issued soil health cards that carry crop specific recommendations of fertilizers required to enable more judicious use of fertilizers to improve productivity and decline cost of cultivation. The present study was conducted in two blocks namely Shabad and Kothur of Rangareddy district of Telangana State during the year 2019-2020 to analyse farmers’ perception on soil health card. Data was collected using a standardised and pre-tested interview schedule. It was observed that majority of the SHC holders were having moderate perception (71.66%), followed by good (15.00%) and poor perception (13.33%). All profile characteristics of farmers except mass media exposure and innovativeness had significant to highly significant association with regard to perception. The results also revealed that there is a significant association between perception and attitude (chi-square value 44.01) and between attitude and use efficiency (chi-square value 29.66).