'The nation that destroys its soils destroys itself' -Theodore Roosevelt, 1907
Healthy Soils Australia (HSA) is a not for profit volunteer organisation concerned with reconnecting healthy soil and human health. Healthy soils are essential to maintain the quality of our food, the purity of our water, and the cleanliness of the air we breathe. Our health and that of our children, and the health of generations to come, depends on the way we manage our soil.
Our focus is on what innovative farmers and graziers are actually doing in their individual ways to create healthy soils, and being an integrator voice for all individuals and organisations with healthy soils on their agenda. Please join our combined voice calling for the benefits of healthy soils. Membership contacts and brochure are located at the bottom of this page.
To create an active network which shares common values and to provide a platform to reconnect the vital role of soil health with food integrity and human health.
To raise awareness of the benefits of healthy soils, and to assist land managers to adopt innovative management options to increase living carbon in their soils, to
Healthy soil is alive with trillions of minute organisms which recycle and free up nutrients to drive plant growth. More plant mass means greater productivity with lower production costs. More nutrient availability and balance means better quality food. More living organisms mean better soil structure and plant growth, and slower water movement through the soil, which increases soil water retention and reduces erosion.
Modern farming practices release carbon from soil by decreasing soil microbial life through the overuse of expensive pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers which destroy the balance between soil microbes and plants. Although fertiliser initially stimulates growth, it burns off soil carbon into the air, decreases microbiology and ultimately inhibits plant growth. As well as the burning of fossil fuels, current farming practices cause a carbon imbalance in the air.
Balance can be restored by land management techniques which use plants and grazing animals to build carbon through enhanced microbiology in the soil. This makes nutrients bio-available to plants and promotes plant growth, enabling them to sequester more carbon from the air to the soil through photosynthesis, perpetuating the cycle to increasing efficiency and restoring carbon and water balance in soil, biomass and the atmosphere.
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