Farm. (Symbolic)
– Photo : Dialogue
Expansion
In Etah, Uttar Pradesh, a laboratory has been set up at the district headquarters to know the health of the soil of a farmer’s field. But the machine for testing micro-elements in it has been out of order for more than a year. The tests are being done on paper and soil health cards are being prepared and distributed by misleading the farmers.
After the health of the soil is checked by the agriculture department, the farmers are given a soil health card. In this, several parameters are checked, apart from this, micronutrients are also checked. Micronutrients include carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, iron, boron, copper and chlorine etc.
For testing these, an Atomit spectrophotometer machine was installed in the lab built at the district headquarters. This machine tests the micronutrients, but it has been more than a year since the machine broke down. Soil health cards are being given to farmers after testing on paper.
Chemicals worth lakhs of rupees come for testing, but there is no trace of them. In such a situation, the testing is going on only on paper and cards are distributed to the farmers by misleading them. In the current year, the target has been set to test the health of the soil of 80 villages, while last year about 6 thousand samples were tested.
Soil health lab in-charge Ashutosh Kumar said that the machine has been out of order for a year; the samples were tested in Aligarh and soil health cards were distributed to the farmers last year.