Healthy soils are vital to the future of the Island’s productive farmland, farm viability, and climate mitigation.

Photo by Alison Shaw

Thanks to the generous support of a local grantor, MVAS is offering soil health technical assistance free of charge to all farmers interested in learning about—and improving—their soil. Participating farmers receive on farm soil testing, one-on-one consulting, and management recommendations specific to their operation. Alli Fish, a soil health specialist, has partnered with MVAS as the technical assistance provider for the program. To learn more about the program or if you are interested in participating in the future, contact Alli at rowe.allison@gmail.com

 Soil health is integral to climate resilience. Improving soil health boosts on-farm productivity and resilience, reduces the loss of soil and nutrients to our waterways, protects water quality and availability, and restores soil biology and function. Furthermore, soils play a critical role in climate mitigation, offering farms and ranches the ability to sequester carbon while improving their own resilience to climate change.

There is no one size fits all approach to soil health, each soil health management system must be tailored to the farming operations goals and constraints. Improving soil health starts with four main principles:

  1. Minimize disturbance.

  2. Maximize the presence of living roots.

  3. Maximize soil cover.

  4. Maximize biodiversity.

Want to learn more about soil health? There is much to uncover. Explore the following links & let’s dig in!

Local Press
Seonwoo, Eunki. “Keeping the Soil Alive,” MV Times, May 23, 2022.


Basics of healthy soils NRCS
USDA’s NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Services) webpage of soil health. Find videos, learning resources, stories from growers, news media resources, partners resources, and soil health science in an easy to navigate website. (source: USDA-NRCS)

Rodale Institute Soil Health
Rodale Institute’s research and fact sheets on regenerative organic farming. (Source: Rodale Institute)

Living Soil: A Documentary for All of Us (documentary)
“Our soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years.” This film appeals for making this the “century of living soil.” (Soil Health Institute)