A standard for soil health

ABSTRACT

To qualify for payments from the public purse, farmers will not only have to produce food but, also, demonstrate good stewardship by delivering public goods: arresting soil erosion, abating floods, recharging groundwater, mitigating global heating, etc. Moreover, discerning consumers seek guarantees of sustainable food production that are not provided by prices and labelling. The proposed Standard for Soil Health meets a felt need by comparing the condition of the soil with its potential capacity to grow crops and maintain environmental services. The criteria are ground cover, biological status represented by soil organic matter and physical status represented by bulk density – yardsticks that also reveal trends so credit may be given for improvement as well as inherent soil quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Public goods
• soil carbon
• bulk density

Acknowledgements

The National Soils Database for England and Wales is maintained by Cranfield University which kindly gave access. The author acknowledges the help of Prof. JA Allan, Dr A Colman, Mr NG and Mrs EJ Dent, Dr M Mulligan, Prof. D Powlson and Prof. M Zeitoun.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.