Farmers urged to protect soil health through balanced fertilisation

Scientists and experts urged grassroots farmers to protect soil health from further degradation through balanced dose fertilisation in the Barind area.

Wide-ranging promotion of balanced fertilisation can be the crucial means of boosting crop production by protecting soil health from further degradation, reports BSS.

Utmost emphasis should be given to habituating the grassroots farmers towards soil test-based balanced fertilisation. There would be no fertiliser crisis in the country if the farmers were enriched with the knowledge of balanced fertilisation, the experts added.

Agricultural and soil health experts came up with the observation while addressing a daylong farmers training and view-sharing meeting titled "Acidic Soil Management after using the Upazila Land and Soil Resources Guideline" on Saturday.

The Divisional Office of the Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI) organised the training for 25 promising farmers at the CARB Centre in Godagari Upazila in the district supported by the Acidic Soil Management Programme.

Chairman of Barind Multipurpose Development Authority Dr Asaduzzaman addressed the meeting as chief guest with SRDI Director Dr Begum Samia Sultana in the chair.

SRDI Principal Scientific Officer Dr Nurul Islam addressed the training session as the focal person mentioning that excessive fertilisation always causes increasing pest attacks to crops and diseases followed by yield loss besides damaging soil fertility balance, declining crop quality and market price.

Apart from this, excessive use of TSP, DAP and Potash is detrimental to other food elements of crops in soil leading to yield loss, misuse of money and affecting soil health.

The Soil Health Expert called for creating awareness among farmers on using appropriate and balanced fertiliser in soil to enhance productivity as well as protect public health.

In his remarks, Dr Asaduzzaman said lesser use of organic matter and little or no use of leguminous green manure and bio-fertilisers have also been detected as degradable factors.

However, soil test-based fertilisation has become indispensable to maintain soil properties positive to the growth of plants, he said.

In the training, the participants were given knowledge related to detecting spurious fertiliser and sample analysis, available mobile soil test laboratory facilities to detect soil productivity and degradation and fertiliser-using guidelines.

On the occasion, balanced dose fertiliser cards were distributed among the 25 farmers.