State & Local Soil Health Strategies: Building Soil Health Policy from the Ground Up

Authors

Izaak Walton League of America, with thanks to the many people who provided information on initiatives summarized in this report, especially the Soil Health Institute, Soil4Climate, and Steven Keleti.

Publication

2019

Summary

State and local governments are taking an increasing interest in promoting soil health, and it’s no wonder. Regenerating healthy soil through practices that restore the balance of beneficial bacteria, fungi, and soil organic matter helps the soil hold substantially more water. For example, a typical degraded Midwest soil with 1% organic matter may hold less than 1” of rain before be- coming saturated, at which point additional rain runs off, carrying chemicals, sediment and manure into near- by streams. The same soil restored to 5% soil organic matter may hold 3.5” of rain before becoming saturated. Less runoff means less pollution in nearby streams and wetlands, and reduced downstream flooding.

Healthy soil requires fewer chemical nutrients and pesticides and provides more consistent yields. That contributes to financial health among farmers, which bolsters rural communities. Healthy soils secure and store large amounts of carbon, helping mitigate climate change while helping insulate farmers from the effects of a changing climate. Increasingly, state and local policy-makers are exploring options to boost soil health, and that interest is reflected in a growing number of state and local policy initiatives related to soil health.

The purpose of this report is to highlight some of the themes of recent state policy initiatives related to soil health, and to identify specific examples of these proposals. Some have been enacted, some have been pro- posed, and others are still being contemplated. We do not expect to catalog every state initiative related to soil health, let alone every local initiative. There are organizations that are working to track state initiatives. In particular, the Soil Health Institute has captured many academic, state agency, and legislative soil health initiatives on its web site: http://bit.ly/SHIcatalog.

We do hope to inspire and inform state and local policymakers with some of the many options to promote healthy soils, in hopes more will take a leadership role. We also provide specific examples they can draw from.