Healthy soil provides us with food and fibre and supports native plants and animals. Healthy soil provides nutrients for crops, pastures and livestock, stores and cycles water and carbon, and resists erosion.
In South Australia food and fibre are produced in the agricultural land in the southern part of the state, and the pastoral land in the north of the state. These are valuable and productive industries. Each year the gross value of cropping is $2.9 billion, of livestock is $1.8 billion and horticulture is $1.3 billion.
Maintaining the health of our soil is important to sustain long term productivity, and to cope with variability in rainfall and increasing risks of drought in a changing climate.