Soil and water testing is one of the most important activity which most of the farmers in this area are unaware of. Having uneducated in this aspect, they go with cultivating – both agriculture and horticulture, and spend lot of money on agricultural high inputs of manures and fertilizers etc., which most of the time are either not required or need in small quantities.
Scientific approach is very much required in agriculture not only to get better results (yields) but also to know what type of crops are better suited in their soils. Though the government has a few soil and water testing stations set up in the district, the farmers have little knowledge in approaching these Government and get the work done.
Therefore, JSDA introduced the easiest technology to the village-steps of the farmers to get soil and water tests done at the village level and know the status of their lands, along with remedial suggestions. As on date water and soil testing is done in the fields of 1069 farmers, belonging to 3 mandals, and suggestions were given to them regarding the soil status, nutritional deficiencies of the lands, water content etc.
For each sample of testing an amount of Rs.80/- was collected from the farmer and Rs.30/- is deposited back into the Farmer Club bank account as corpus fund. The balance of Rs.50/- is the cost of chemicals used for the testing.Basing on these tests it is noticed that the farmers could save to a tune of 30% they used to spend on the purchase and usage of unnecessary chemical manures.