Soil Health / Soil Quality

Soil Quality ?  . . . . Soil Health?

Our view of soil management has certainly changed over the last couple of decades.  Rather than a medium to be used, it is now has a broader integrated role in our management decisions, whether the farm or the home garden. The more consideration and learning about soils role and the value of its services, the more we as growers are exploring the role we play in supporting our soils to provide a long term sustainable, productive environment and economically value, providing food and recreation for people.

Often communicating the terms soil health and soil quality as interchangeable, I see the definitions as distinctly different measures of the condition and service of our soils. I see many soil tests, and work with growers to manage that soil – specifically for the crop being grown. Growing lucerne on the alkaline mallee sands of Lake Boga compared with the acid clays of Ballarat, you get the picture that a measure of healthy soil while both are, they will have different quality measurement attributes in each environment which contribute to crop production. It is our role as land managers to define both soil health and soil quality attributes and manage soils accordingly.

I know I will require X amount of calcium and potassium to produce X amount of lucerne crop with the feed value attributes buyers require. This I refer to as a quality, as it has a distinct measure that I need to meet. Anything less, and I will not the meet quality measures. However, with soil health, I know in both regions, that earthworm numbers will be very different, colour will be very different as will the likelihood and distribution of layering in the soil. A healthy mallee sand will likely have a few worms, compared with the Ballarat red soils of potentially dozens, but what do they contribute to the crop.

In the next posts on Soil Health/ Soil Quality, we will discuss the difference between Soil Health and Soil Quality and a range of measures and attributes we can use to measure improvement.