World Soil Day- 2022 Celebration By ICAR

Caring soil is extremely important for sustaining healthy life on earth. The human/animal health actually lies on good health of soil as it supports healthy plant growth to provide nutritious produce to keep us healthy. A healthy soil would ensure proper retention and release of water and nutrients, promote and sustain root growth, maintain soil biotic habitat, respond to management, resist degradation and act as a buffer for environmental pollution.

 

Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) through its research institutions and KVKs celebrated this year World Soil Day 2022 under the theme “Soils: Where food begins” on 5th December 2022 throughout the country. The programme aims to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, increasing soil awareness and encouraging societies to improve soil health. The messages on “World Soil Day” received from Sh. Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare and Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Secretary (DARE) & Director General (ICAR) were also deliberated.

On this occasion, various events such as awareness campaigns, lecture, field and lab visit, demonstrations, lecture by experts, group discussion, debating, photography competition, quiz, among the farmers, staff and school children etc. were organized to create awareness among the stakeholders on importance of healthy soil for healthy life besides distributing inputs and soil health cards to farmers. They were also taught about soil testing, importance of soil health cards, integrated nutrient management, in-situ/ex-situ decomposing of crop residues to produce high quality organic manure, biofertilizers to improve soil health. A total 76,000 participants comprising of dignitaries, scientists, farmers, technical staff, and students attended physically/virtually across the nation.
(Source-Natural Resource Management- Division,ICAR)