Step 1 – What do I want from my soils?

Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 | Step 4 | Step 5

Soils are the fundamental asset of a farm. Farm health cannot be properly achieved without having healthy soils.

Soils may appear robust and forgiving, but they suffer and damage readily. Care and understanding is needed to keep them healthy. Income, sustainability and esteem are closely linked to soil health.

If you aim for healthy soils, then there are several reasons why you may want to take action.

There are direct indications of poor soil health on your farm:

waterlogging?
compaction?
surface crusting?
erosion by wind and/or water?
clay dispersion?
dense layers within the soil profile?

The profitability of the farm is affected by:

poor seedling emergence (crusting effect)?
unsatisfactory plant growth (nutrient effect, structure effect, waterlogging)?
difficulty in working the soil (cultivation)?
poor root exploration and penetration (compaction, available water)?
weediness?
recent major event (fire, flood, pestilence)?

You want to decrease the impact of your farm on the environment in terms of:

The best way of dealing with these usually involves more careful matching of your farming activities with the capability (strengths and weaknesses) of the land and its soils. See step 2.

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