Source: PRESS RELEASE, 8/12/22

The Soil Health Institute (SHI) today announced its recommended measurements for assessing soil health. These recommendations answer the No. 1 question about soil health that farmers, ranchers, and their advisers have been asking since the soil health movement began.  

 
With support from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, and General Mills, the Soil Health Institute led a 3-year, $6.5-million project to identify effective measurements for soil health across North America. SHI partnered with over 100 scientists at 124 long-term agricultural research sites in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico where conventional management systems were compared with soil health-improving systems.  

“This allowed us to evaluate over 30 soil health measurements at each site where they had the appropriate experimental design to allow us to come to the appropriate statistical conclusion about the effectiveness of each measurement,” said Dr. Wayne Honeycutt, President and CEO of the Soil Health Institute.

“Evaluating each measurement across such a wide range of climates, soils, cropping systems, and management practices also provided the scientific rigor we needed to identify which measurements could be widely used.” 

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