Understanding Soil Health

Soil health is defined as the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans. Healthy soil gives us clean air and water, bountiful crops and forests, productive grazing lands, diverse wildlife, and beautiful landscapes. 

Soil does all this by performing five essential functions:

Soil helps control where rain, snow-melt, and irrigation water goes. Water flows over the land or into and through the soil. 

The diversity and productivity of living things depends on soil.

The minerals and microbes in soil are responsible for filtering, buffering, degrading, immobilizing, and detoxifying organic and inorganic materials, including industrial and municipal by-products and atmospheric deposits.

Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and many other nutrients are stored, transformed, and cycled in the soil. 

Soil structure provides a medium for plant roots. Soils also provide support for human structures and protection for archeological treasures. 

Soil health is achieved through applying Regenerative agricultural principles focus on restoring and enhancing soil health by using principles that create more diverse soil microbiological communities. Regenerative farming practices allow food growers to create an ideal subterranean home for soil microbes that, in turn, deliver nutrients to plants, improve soil function (including fertility and water infiltration) and increase the nutrient density of the food they produce—at far less cost than conventional farming practices.