Collaborating with farmers to design a practical soil health checklist

Abstract

If farmers are to determine whether their farm goals for resource condition are being met, and whether changes in farm management are leading towards a more sustainable farming system, then they need to be able to monitor these areas. Yet to date, an easy to use, practical and reliable checklist to be used by farmers to monitor trends in soil health has not been developed. This project sought to collaborate with farmers in the development of a soil health checklist and the research process acknowledged the importance of local conditions, farmers' existing knowledge on soils and their preferences for delivery and presentation of the final product. The project was conducted in the north west cropping region of New South Wales, Australia. The project reports on a prototype for a farmers soil health checklist-the features they use, how they recognise those features, especially the language they use to describe a healthy and unhealthy soil, and finally the techniques they use to measure those features.