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At Land Core, we understand that healthy soil is more than an agricultural asset—it’s also a public health imperative. While our work has long emphasized the critical role of soil in building resilience and agricultural viability for our producers, we are equally clear that it plays a foundational role in supporting the health of our communities.

It’s been a very busy year thus far, with our team adding many new bills and several pieces of reintroduced legislation from the previous Congress. This indicates not only continued support for soil health but a commitment to carry over and continue the groundwork laid in preparation for the overdue Farm Bill.

Explore the archive of our bill tracker alerts, which provide regular updates on soil health legislation in Congress.

Land Core will be expanding its engagement with HHS in the years ahead, supporting the individuals and institutions working to ensure that this emerging soil-centered vision is meaningfully implemented. The potential to reshape national health outcomes through improved food systems grounded in soil health is significant and deserves serious attention.

Although Land Core is focused specifically on the soil health and the importance of  supporting US agriculture in ensuring that we have the ability to independently grow the healthy foods, fibers, and fuels that we need to thrive as a nation, there is an undeniable correlation between the crops grown in healthy soils (vs degraded soils) and the health and well-being of those who consume them.

Land Core is pleased to provide input on NRCS’s commitment to improving Conservation Practice Standards (CPS). The comments address Soil Carbon Amendment; Herbaceous Weed Treatment; Nutrient Management; and Prescribed Burning. Detailed recommendations are also made regarding the need for increased technical assistance, and for innovative practices, such as incorporating data about the risk-reducing benefits of soil health practices into farm credit and crop insurance programs.

Here is a high-level list of policies that the incoming administration could implement at HHS to advance soil health as a foundational vehicle in the pursuit of human health. The policies are streamlined to highlight key initiatives and combined actions across agencies for maximum effectiveness. 

Soil health is the foundation for national food security. It is the bedrock of American public health and the key to the integrity and reliability of our country’s food system. Healthy soils are a vital path to resilience and prosperity for American producers.  

The following recommendations have been designed to provide specific guidance to the incoming presidential administration and focuses on high-level, actionable priorities for key agencies across the federal government to advance soil health.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Services (NASS) recently requested information for content requests for the 2027 Census of Agriculture.

Land Core submitted comments and recommendations, building on the organization’s leadership around the importance of soil health practices and their ability to provide subsequent risk reduction, economic, and environmental benefits.

While there hasn’t been as much Farm Bill activity recently, the House and Senate Ag-FDA Appropriations bills both passed and await floor time — we’ve added these to our Federal Bill Tracker and outlined below. We’ve also continued to track Core Soil Health bills introduced since the beginning of the summer.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently sought public input on “Procedures for Quantification, Reporting, and Verification of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Associated With the Production of Domestic Agricultural Commodities Used as Biofuel Feedstocks.” Land Core submitted comments and recommendations, building on the organization’s leadership around the importance of consistent outcomes verification protocols in soil health (and related GHG) measurement, monitoring and reporting. The recommendations also weigh in on the diversity of crops that can be used for biofuels feedstocks while building soil health, and soil health practices that should be considered by USDA.

Land Core commends the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for building upon the Growing Climate Solutions Act (GCSA) of 2021. The Department’s leadership on this topic sends an important signal to the agricultural community. We appreciated the opportunity to provide input on the proposed framework.

The last few months have seen a flurry of activity, as the House Agriculture Committee released their full Farm Bill text, and the Senate Agriculture Majority and Minority leaders both released summaries of their Farm Bill proposals.

By supporting voluntary financial incentives that complement existing conservation programs, farmers can be encouraged to adopt practices that prioritize soil health and long-term sustainability… We urge Congress to prioritize the following report language and program requests for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in FY25.

We're thrilled to share that our team’s first academic manuscript, titled “Diversified crop rotations mitigate agricultural losses from dry weather,” has been submitted for peer review! In the meantime, the "pre-print" manuscript is available on agriRxiv.

In the past month, little movement has occurred on the Farm Bill. In the Senate, Senators Debbie Stabenow (chair) and John Boozman (ranking member) have publicly expressed that they are still negotiating key aspects of the Farm Bill and don’t expect to release a draft until after the 2024 Presidential Election in November.

We added 9 bills in October and 14 in November to the Soil Health Bill Tracker. For bills introduced prior to October, 39 bills added at least one co-sponsor, showing that those bills have traction and support as we near the introduction of the Farm Bill.

The Land Core Risk Model is quantifying the economic risk-mitigation value of specific soil health practices by examining the correlation between the implementation of these practices over time and their impact on yield.

Despite the August recess, we still added 30 “Core” soil health marker bills to the Bill Tracker and dozens more “Secondary” bills.

With the Farm Bill fast-approaching (and the FY24 Appropriations and Senate Ag Committee Farm Bill request deadlines just behind us), members of the 118th Congress have been hard at work introducing in the last few weeks.

Land Core commends the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for proposing a framework for measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the agriculture and forest sectors.

With the Farm Bill fast-approaching (and the FY24 Appropriations and Senate Ag Committee Farm Bill request deadlines just behind us), members of the 118th Congress have been hard at work introducing in the last few weeks.

Land Core is pleased to provide input on the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposed Conservation and Landscape Health rule. Our comments elaborate on how and why the BLM might acknowledge and incentivize the opportunity to use the best standards for well-managed grazing for landscape restoration in partnership with ranchers, creating not only a win-win for the agency, ranchers, and national food security, but also a blueprint for the future of public-private partnerships in the pursuit of economically beneficial conservation.

Today, Land Core, along with a diverse group of 170 farms, businesses, and organizations, submitted a letter to Congressional Agriculture Committee leadership in support of the DEFER Act and its inclusion in the 2023 Farm Bill.

As lawmakers consider the array of new federal policies, programs, and incentives aimed at facilitating these new efficiency-focused technologies, we must address a crucial concern regarding the potential conflation of “economic efficiency” and “conservation efficiency”.

Attention, soil health enthusiasts, farmers, and food and ag policy pros! Land Core, a pioneering non-profit committed to advancing soil health policies and programs in the US, is excited to unveil a transformative upgrade to their Federal Soil Health Bill Tracker. With a focus on making policy information more accessible to all, this user-friendly, dynamic web-based tool brings federal soil health policy to life.

With the Farm Bill fast-approaching (and the FY24 Appropriations and Senate Ag Committee Farm Bill request deadlines just behind us), members of the 118th Congress have been hard at work introducing in the last few weeks. We have added over 40 bills to our Bill Tracker that would impact soil health and resilience, and will be adding more in the coming weeks. 

Land Core submitted a request to Congress to invest in soil health and resilient agriculture through the FY 2024 appropriations process, in which Congress annually approves billions in discretionary funding for farm and food programs.

Today, Land Core, in partnership with Kiss the Ground and 152 other farms, organizations, and businesses, advocated for the USDA-NRCS funding of the Inflation Reduction Act to back regenerative agriculture. “Advance Regenerative Agriculture through the Inflation Reduction Act, Document Number 2022-25292.”

As part of our work with the Regenerate America coalition (which is amplifying the voices of farmers and ranchers calling for regenerative agriculture and soil health to be a priority in the 2023 Farm Bill), Land Core has developed an FSA Loan Deferment Program that could potentially unlock hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in soil health, without costing taxpayers a cent.