100 million Soil Health Cards are distributed to farmers in the first phase (2015-2017).

• It is a scheme to provide every farmer a Soil Health Card in a Mission mode. 
• The Central Government provides assistance to State Governments for setting up Soil Testing Laboratories for issuing Soil Health Cards to farmers. 
• The scheme will be implemented in all states to promote soil testing services, issue of soil health cards and development of nutrient management practices. 
• State Governments have adopted innovative practices like involvement of agricultural students, NGOs and private sector in soil testing, determining average soil health of villages, etc., to issue Soil Health Cards.
• The scheme assumes importance as the imbalanced application of fertilisers have caused deficiency of primary nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), secondary nutrients (such as sulphur), and micro-nutrients (boron, zinc, copper etc.) in most parts of country. 

Other developments

• Soil Health Card mobile App has been launched to help the farmers. 
• GPS based soil sample collection has been made compulsory. 
• Online registration of samples and test results are uploaded on the National Portal of the Soil Health Card. 
• A farm will get the soil card once in every 3 years.