Maintaining healthy soil enhances biodiversity, and enhances plant and animal health. The Woolmark Company’s parent company works with industry to research and support initiatives to help woolgrowers manage their soil.
The importance of soil health
Soil is not there simply to support plants and their root systems; it’s a dynamic, living environment and a vital farm resource in its own right.
The Woolmark Company provides valuable resources and supports industry initiatives dedicated to environmental health, including improving soil quality and enhancing biodiversity.
The benefits of soil biota diversity includes increased soil moisture holding, greater carbon cycling and greater drought resilience.
More than any other farm resource, soil health is about protecting and building up the natural capital so that woolgrowers, as well as future generations, can continue to live and prosper on the land on which they manage.
Having healthy soils involves managing soils according to their capability, making the right fertilizer decisions, implementing solutions for problem soils, maintaining ground cover, and looking after the soil biology.
Farm management practices that support healthy soils
- Maintaining groundcover to protect soil and keep the soil microbial life healthy
- Managing saline soils through vegetation such as native saltbush
- Cover-cropping to reduce moisture evaporation
- Revegetation fencing to manage erosion.
Studies are currently under way to investigate perennial pasture species that sequester atmospheric nitrogen and embed these nutrients into the soil to support soil structure and increase ground cover.