ICAR celebrates World Soil Day-2022 

ICAR celebrates ‘World Soil Day’ on 5th December 2022  at ICAR-CCARI, Goa. The theme of World Soil Day for the year 2022 is ‘Soils: Where food begins’. Shri Shripad Yesso Naik, Ministry of Tourism and Port, Shipping and Waterways, Government of India graced the occasion as Chief Guest. On the occasion, he highlighted the importance of the soil, referred it as our mother, and explained how soil health and human health are intricately related. He has stressed on increasing agricultural production through balanced soil nutrition, agro-climatic zone wise crop planning and intercropping. He urged farmers to take up natural farming techniques for better and sustainable soil health. He has also highlighted about various government schemes in relation to the well-being of the farmers.

Dr Himanshu Pathak, Secretary (DARE) & Director General (ICAR) Guest of Honour joined the programme in virtual mode. In his address, he emphasized on soil health card scheme and neem coated urea to increase fertilizer use efficiency. He urged all to work together to save the soil. Dr Suresh Kumar Chaudhari, Deputy Director General (Natural Resource Management), ICAR, New Delhi and Guest of Honour briefed about the importance of soil in food production. He highlighted the issues related to land degradation and soil health restoration. He also stressed on bringing school students and stakeholders who are not directly related to research under soil day programme to make them aware about soil health.

Dr. Parveen Kumar, Director, ICAR-CCARI welcomed all the dignitaries, staff of ICAR and farmers. In his welcome address, he briefed about the history behind celebrating World Soil Day. He emphasized on the importance of soil and stressed upon maintaining good soil health to get healthy food for all. More than 100 farmers joined physically and about 6000 scientists, technical staff of ICAR joined the program virtually across the nation. On this occasion, soil health cards were also distributed to the 100 farmers.

Smt. Sunetra Talaulikar, Subject Matter Specialist (Home Science) and Incharge, ICAR-KVK, North Goa proposed the vote of thanks and Mr. Rahul Kulkarni, ACTO compered the programme.