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What is soil health
Soil health describes the capacity of a soil to be used productively without adversely affecting its future productivity, the ecosystem or the environment. Soil health emphasizes the integration of biological with chemical and physical measures of soil quality that affect farmers' profits and the environment.
Soil health deals with both inherent and dynamic soil quality. Inherent soil quality relates to the natural (genetic) characteristics of the soil, such as its texture. These qualities are the result of soil-forming factors, are generally represented in soil surveys and cannot be changed easily.
In contrast, dynamic soil quality components -- such as compaction, biological functioning, root proliferation, etc. -- are readily affected by management practices. The dynamic component is of most interest to growers because good management allows the soil to come to its full potential.
The inherent and dynamic soil quality components do interact, however, as some soil types are much more susceptible to degradation and unforgiving of poor management than others.
Soil health is important to farmers and growers because they need to know if their soil will continue to sustain profitable yields, and to help reduce long-term risks to environmental quality.
The Cornell Soil Health Program Work Team has developed soil measurements to help monitor the state of soil health both in space and time. These indicators can measure soil improvement or degradation resulting from different management practices and also the long term changes in soil health under given management practices.
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Cornell Soil Health Program Work Team goals
The goals of the Cornell Soil Health Program Work Team include:
- Identify critical soil quality problems currently reducing farm sustainability and profitability for growers in New York State and the Northeast region.
- Develop appropriate management solutions using Cornell's extensive research resources.
- Work with growers to incorporate new practices for the benefit of their soils and to ultimately improve farm and environmental sustainability.
- Produce commonly accepted guidelines for soil health sampling, analysis and interpretation.
- Develop the tools and infrastructure to provide meaningful soil quality assessment and management suggestions to complement existing soil testing services in a cost-effective manner.
- Create a researchable database of regional soil health data.
- Increase soil health literacy among growers and agricultural support professionals.
- Provide a comprehensive soil health educational program for New York State and the Northeast region.
Program sponsors
Accomplishments
Since 2001, the Cornell Soil Health Program Work Team has conducted extensive field sampling in growers' fields and at and Cornell research farm sites, set up demonstration trials and research plots, developed a soil health database, and hosted outreach programs for growers.
Highlights include:
- Initiating 10 large, long-term demonstration trials in collaborating growers' fields.
- Creating six replicated, large-scale, long-term research and training sites, including the Gates Farm in Geneva, N.Y., dedicated to assessing the impact of management practices on soil health.
- Broadening the project to incorporate field and forage crops in addition to vegetable cropping systems.
- Expanding regionally beyond New York State to work at present with collaborators in Vermont and Maryland.
- Developing a new soil health assessment protocol that examines six soil health indicators, unifies soil sampling for physical, chemical and biological measurements and is expected to reduce cost and time of sampling.
- Generating a color-coded soil health evaluation report form with preliminary interpretations of results to make available to collaborating growers.
- Compiling a baseline soil health database that will soon be made available on a website.
- Analyzing more than 1,000 samples from growers' sites and demonstration plots.
- Performing soil health evaluations on many farms and helping growers assess the impact of new soil and/or crop management techniques, such as new tillage systems, crop rotations, organic amendments, and cover crops.
- Hosting field days, holding hands-on workshops, and making presentations at regional, national, and international scientific conferences.
- Interacting with more than 500 growers, extension educators and consultants.
- Surveying growers in 2002 and 2006 to evaluate perceptions about soil health and effectiveness of educational outreach programs.
- Producing publications for farmers, extension and research audiences.
- Increasing general soil health awareness and literacy among growers and agricultural support personnel.
- Creating a soil health website.
Annual reports
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