About the Project

A new national effort called Probing Our Country’s Soil Health is focused on creating a free and user-friendly tool for farmers to benchmark the soil health of their fields.

The tool is called Soil Health Assessment Protocol and Evaluation (or SHAPE). The tool will also provide insights of management practices that may improve crop yields when enhancing soil health.

They are looking for farmers and ranchers to participate!

NOTE ON PRACTICES: In order to improve the SHAPE tool, they need a database from diverse soils and practices. That means getting fields across the spectrum of soil health. Fields over all major agricultural crops, soil types, and management practices are needed, not just fields with good soil health.

Short video about the project

What will you receive by participating?

• Compensation for your time (~1 hour, $170)
• A personalized soil health report of your fields. The value of this lab work (at no cost to you) is about $1200 per field.
• A copy of a book called “Probing Our Country's Soil Health”. This will be a hard-copy photo book illustrating soil health across the country and project outcome. It will also include photos of many of the participating farmers on their own fields.

What is required to participate?

• Sign up for a one-hour Zoom Meeting where a facilitator will lead you through a management survey for 2 or 3 fields. This will take about an hour.
• Grant access to fields for hand-probe soil sampling from 2 or 3 sites from each field. Normally this will happen within 3-6 months after the survey. You will be notified beforehand.

To enroll as a participant, visit the 
booking page to schedule a meeting.

Questions? Contact:
Dr. Matt Yost
matt.yost@usu.edu
435-797-4210

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Preview YouTube video Probing Our Country's Soil Health