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8 Hillel, D. (1991). Out of the earth: Civilization and the life of the soil. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
1 Soil Health: An Overview and Goals for These Volumes
Douglas L. Karlen*, Diane E. Stott, Maysoon M. Mikha, and Bianca N. Moebius‐Clune
Synopsis of Two‐Volume Book
Farmers and ranchers, private sector businesses, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), academic‐, state‐, and federal‐research projects, as well as state and federal soil conservation, water quality and other environmental programs have begun to adopt soil health as a unifying goal and promote it through workshops, books, and public awareness meetings and campaigns. The driver is an increased awareness that soil resources are crucial for not only meeting global demand for high‐quality food, feed, and fiber but also to help mitigate more extreme weather events and to protect water and air quality, wildlife habitat, and biodiversity.
Volume 1 briefly reviews selected “Approaches to Soil Health Analysis” including a brief history of the concept, challenges and opportunities, meta‐data and assessment, applications to forestry and urban land reclamation, and future soil health monitoring and evaluation approaches.
Volume 2 focuses on “Laboratory Methods for Soil Health Analysis” including an overview and suggested analytical approaches intended to provide meaningful, comparable data so that soil health can be used to guide restoration and protection of our global soil resources.
Introduction
Soil health research, books, workshops, websites, press releases, and other forms of technology transfer materials have made rural and urban producers and consumers of all ages more aware of soil resources and the services they provide. Innovative farmers and ranchers, the private sector, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), academic, state, and federal researchers, and policymakers around the world are becoming more aware of how properly functioning soils more effectively respond to: (1) changing climate patterns and more extreme weather events (Paustian et al., 2016); (2) increasing demands for abundant, high‐quality food, feed, and fiber to meet needs of an increasing global population (Doran, 2002), and (3) the need to protect water, air, wildlife, plant, and microbial biodiversity (Andrén & Balandreau, 1999; Havlicek & Mitchell, 2014).
Enhancing global soil health will improve humankind’s capacity to maintain or increase crop yield, achieve better yield stability, reduce purchased input costs, and enhance critical ecosystem services (Boehm & Burton, 1997). Striving for improved soil health is not only important for croplands, but also for pastures, native rangelands, orchards, and forests (Herrick et al., 2012; Chendev et al., 2015; Gelaw et al., 2015; Vitro et al., 2015). Yet, there is still a lot of confusion and uncertainty regarding soil health in the U.S. and around the world. One reason is that soils are complex and perform many different functions that respond to changes in the same properties and processes in different and sometimes conflicting ways. For example, what may be considered good soil health characteristics for crop productivity (e.g., well aggregated, porous with good water infiltration, efficient nutrient cycling) may not be optimum for water quality if high infiltration rates and/or macropores result in rapid transport of contaminants to surface or subsurface water resources. Similarly, no‐tillage as a single practice may improve soil health by increasing soil organic carbon (SOC), but improper management decisions (e.g., timing, equipment size, lack of living roots) or unanticipated weather patterns (e.g., multiple freeze–thaw cycles) may increase compaction and runoff compared to using a moderate fall tillage operation. For those reasons, soil health assessment and management must always be holistic, striving to balance tradeoffs, and accounting for biological, chemical, and physical property and process changes to be useful and meaningful for regenerative and sustainable soil management and protection of our fragile resources.
The concept of soil health is not new (see Figure 2.1 of Chapter 2). It has evolved from both indigenous knowledge derived over millennia through trial and error, and over a century of soil and agronomic research focused on soil management, soil conservation, soil condition, soil quality, soil tilth, soil security, and similar topics. Fundamental roots of soil health principles can be traced to the time of Plato (Hillel, 1991) and Columella, a prominent writer about agriculture within the Roman Empire (~40 to 60 BCE). Current soil health efforts reflect the enormous efforts given by people such as Hugh Hammond Bennett, founder of the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Soil health activities can be traced to soil conservation efforts implemented in response to the Dust Bowl and other natural events. As a result, it has become a mantra to focus people’s attention on the soil beneath their feet (Carter et al., 1997; Montgomery, 2007). Unfortunately, as acknowledged 25 yr ago (Doran and Jones, 1996), soil health was and continues (Chapter 3) to be a controversial topic.
Many current soil health activities began to emerge in the 1970s (Alexander, 1971). In part, they were accelerated by the 1973 U.S. oil embargo which increased energy and nitrogen (N) fertilizer prices (Warkentin & Fletcher, 1977). Escalating N fertilizer prices led to renewed interest among soil and agronomic researchers regarding how the soil microbial community might be enhanced to help supply crop‐available N rather than continuing to depend on costly fertilizer inputs (Gregorich & Carter, 1997; Tilman, 1998). The Food Security Act of 1985 also introduced new incentives to encourage producers to implement minimum‐ or no‐tillage conservation practices to reduce soil erosion, thus increasing farmer and society focus on the importance of soils for producing the food and fiber humans need and. For maintaining the ecosystems on which all life ultimately depends (National Research Council, 1993).
In contrast to soil quality efforts during the 1990s and early 2000s, a major driver of soil health projects from 2011 to 2020 has been investment by private industry. This can be partially explained by the rapid increase in corporate social responsibility reporting between 2011 and 2020 (Sustainability Reports, 2019). Consumer demand and sustainable, responsible shareholder investment pressures have driven this increase in reporting—which has created a corporate need for transparency in the environmental impact from agricultural production systems.
Increased public awareness of soil health has opened avenues to productive partnerships between industry, governmental, grower and conservation organizations due to the ability to create win‐win‐win scenarios between farm economic, environmental improvement (e.g., water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity) and social outcomes (e.g., AgSolver and EFC Systems development of ‘Profit Zone Manager’ and its incorporation into the FieldAlytics platform for field data management; ANTARES– Enabling Sustainable Landscape Design project linking soil health and the continual improvement of sustainable operating bioenergy supply systems).
A leader in building public‐private‐partnerships focused on soil was the Soil Renaissance which was initiated to reawaken public interest and awareness of the importance of soil health in vibrant, profitable and sustainable natural resource systems. Founded as a Farm Foundation and Noble Research Institute collaboration, it sought to make maintenance and improvement of soil health (https://www.farmfoundation.org/projects/the‐soil‐renaissance‐knowledge‐to‐sustain‐earths‐most‐valuable‐asset‐1873‐d1/)
