Comparing Soil Health Assessment Frameworks to Strengthen Ontario’s Soil Health Assessment and Plan

Strengthening Ontario’s Soil Health Assessment

The Greenbelt Foundation, in partnership with the Soil Health Institute, has released a recommendations report for soil health assessment frameworks. Using two years of on-farm data collected across 262 fields in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, this report compares two approaches for assesing soil health based on indicator performance and framework design: the Soil Health Assessment and Plan’s (SHAP) distribution-based approach and the Soil Health Institute’s (SHI) reference-based benchmarking approach.

The findings are used to develop actionable recommendations to strengthen SHAP and improve its ability to support effective soil health management, advising, and program delivery. Additional findings detail how providing tailored management plans and reducing testing costs can support widespread use of soil health assessment by Ontario farmers.

The 7 Key Recommendations

To strengthen Ontario’s Soil Health Assessment and Plan assessment framework the report recommends:

1. Review correlated indicators to remove redundancy, retaining those that capture distinct soil functions.
2. Reassess the method used for aggregate stability in SHAP. 
3. Minimize distortions in scores caused by grouping scores by three texture categories; consider using continuous texture where possible. 
4. Provide likely ranges of SHAP scores for similar cropping and management systems to help interpret results.
5. Improve communication of soil health potential in visualization of indicator results.
6. Further develop tools to support soil health management planning and advising farmers. 
7. Offer cost-sharing for soil health testing to build interest and encourage adoption. 

Together, the recommendations aim to create a credible, scalable foundation for Ontario’s soil health programming.