Ms. Katie Harrigan of Tufts University provided an update on both U.S. federal and state soil health legislation during the Policy session of the Soil Health Institute’s 2020 Annual Meeting in her talk “Federal and State Level Soil Health Legislation.”
The 2018 Farm Bill (Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018) includes approximately 60 federal-level provisions that include soil health. Almost every provision is active by 2020. Provisions to land stewardship programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) encourage soil health planning, resource-conserving crop rotation planning, soil tests and soil remediation through increased incentive payments. Other provisions for land retirement programs, like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), enhance end of contract considerations in favor of conservation efforts and form a new Soil Health and Income Protection Program (SHIPP). These and other policy and program provisions will help buffer some of the investment costs as farmers and ranchers change the landscape of soil health.
For more information see our video below: