Measuring soil health : what diagnostic and monitoring systems exist to measure soil health?

The workshop “Measuring soil health” took place at the World Living Soils Forum in the presence of Claire Chenu, research director at INRAE, Antoine Dauphin, development manager at Vignobles de Krug, Thibaut Deplanche, managing director of Celesta-lab, and Sébastien Roumegous, director of Biosphères.

In a participatory agora, they discussed diagnostic and monitoring systems for measuring soil health.

Here are the key points from their discussions:

✅ Soil quality is based on its potential to respond to farmers’ demands.

✅ Measuring soil health is the first step in a transition to regenerative agriculture.

✅ The spade test is a simple and effective method for conducting an initial soil analysis.

✅ The restoration time for a degraded soil is about ten years, depending on the geographical area, the climate and the original state of the land.

✅ After the soil health assessment phase, professionals develop methods to treat the soil. These need to be adapted to the geographical area.