Key informant interview data to identify soil characteristics of the study villages, Punjab

This survey was done in 122 villages of Punjab, as part of the SPIA-funded project on the impact of Conservation Agriculture (CA), particularly the impact of Happy Seeder technology, on yield and residue burning. During the exploratory surveys, we found that the adoption of CA depends on the soil structure. To identify the soil characteristics, our team of enumerators interviewed 2-3 knowledgeable people per sample village. The participants were asked to draw the map of village and mark the regions with clayey / loamy / sandy soils and with saline / sodic soils within the village boundaries using an A3-size graph sheet. From this graph sheet the percentage of cultivated area under different soil types and salinity / sodicity were calculated.