What is Soil Health?

Soil health is the soil’s ability to sustain agricultural crop productivity while providing essential functions such as regulating water, filtering and buffering pollutants, and cycling nutrients without resulting in soil degradation or otherwise harming the environment. A long-term strategy to build soil health will foster more productive crops,  improve water quality, create better resilience during extreme weather events, and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change.   

The basic principles of soil health, as detailed by the Minnesota Office for Soil Health, are: 

• Keep the soil covered.
• Minimize disturbance.
• Keep living roots in the ground.
• Diversify rotations.
• Integrate livestock where possible. 

The above text is from BWSR: Soils and Soil Health | MN Board of Water, Soil Resources