Soil health defines the fitness of a soil for its intended use. In food production systems, a healthy soil is one that sustains plant productivity while maintaining environmental quality, promoting plant and animal health, and sustaining livelihoods. Evaluating soil health requires indicators that can be used to assess changes in soil condition over time and in response to soil management. Chemical, physical and biological indicators have all been proposed and many have been implemented successfully in soil health assessments in New York State. Here, we are aiming to adapt soil health assessment frameworks and related management practices for use in developing countries to help farmers make informed soil management decisions that will help them improve their soil health status and thus plant and animal health on their farms.

Farmers, consumers, and regulatory agencies are all concerned about soil health. Globally, many farms are producing less, even where inputs are increasing. Poor or inappropriate soil management practices in many areas have led to increased soil compaction and erosion, decreased soil organic matter content and a loss of soil fertility. In addition, increased leaching and runoff of essential plant nutrients affect the quality of nearby water bodies and increased fluxes of greenhouse gases affect atmospheric chemistry and global climate change. Many unrelated initiatives at Cornell have supported research, teaching and extension activities on soil health over the past decade. In NY, the Soil Health Program Work Team (PWT, a group of faculty, growers and extension educators) has been developing and testing soil health protocols in NY State since 2001 and is currently involved in various extension and research efforts throughout the Northeast. These protocols are now sufficiently refined to permit their use internationally. Outside of the PWT, Cornell is carrying out soil health-related research in soil biology, ecology and soil physics, nutrient management and plant pathology. By using expertise from both international and domestic programs, we are crafting a more effective international program to initiate and backstop research, extend research results to the field, share information and ultimately, make practical information available to small farmers in the developing world.

In response to the growing interest in soil health, the CIIFAD-based, interdepartmental, International Soil Health Group (ISHG) is providing a format to bring faculty, staff and students from a number of departments together with resource people from Mann Library, the Einaudi Center and CALS International Programs to develop, support and follow up on global soil health initiatives. More specifically, the objectives of the ISHG are to: (i) facilitate international partnerships and alliances; (ii) develop, coordinate and leverage funds for proposals to carry out both collaborative international research and training; (iii) streamline interdepartmental collaboration and seek opportunities for wider involvement by Cornell faculty and students; (iv) facilitate and build upon current soil health research; (v) liaise with and upgrade the CIIFAD-sponsored soil health-related virtual networks (currently based on websites and listservs in several languages) in order to enhance sharing of information and resources worldwide and to engage international collaborative partners (see http://www.soilhealth.org); and (vi) raise the profile of soil health as a topic on the global agricultural research agenda and (vii) establish Cornell as a major leader in this arena.

We have held three mini-workshops over the past 3 years attended by Cornell faculty, students, research associates and visitors to update international activities in soil health and to establish a core working group. We have established concrete linkages with Leyte University in the Philippines, Zhejiang University in China, Zamorano in Honduras, ICRAF and TSBF in Kenya and CIAT in Colombia to work on soil health protocols for international adoption. Courses to train overseas scientists are being developed. We have established a new initiative on soil pollution in collaboration with Zhejiang University, China, and have exchanged faculty in order to develop joint programs with support from the J. Lehman Initiative for Scholarly Exchanges with China.

J. Lehman Initiative on Scholarly Exchanges with China