Top: Image courtesy Nerds For Earth

Given compost’s critical role in building and maintaining healthy soil, BioCycle was excited to receive an announcement about the US State Soil Health Policy Map, a crowd-sourced policy tracker designed to support the growth of healthy soil and related policies by sharing frameworks and lessons learned. In 2021, 31 states had Healthy Soils legislation on their dockets, with resolutions passing and bills becoming law in 14 states. The total number of states with Healthy Soils resolutions and laws is now 20, with 10 of those in 2021 (4 of the 14 were in states that had passed resolutions or laws in previous years). These 20 states include 47.5% of U.S. farm acreage (427,242,872 of 900,217,576 acres, based upon 2017 National Agricultural Statistics Service Agricultural Census), and 49.6% of U.S. state population (164,100,406 of 330,759,736 people, based upon 2020 Census).

As a collaborative and “living” site, this map is updated by volunteers as policy is conceived, created, and moves forward. Information on each state is maintained by a “State Curator” or group of curators who serve to keep the space information-based, clean and functional. “If you are interested in adding information to the resource list below, or to a state page, please email the state curator at @healthysoilspolicy.org (ex: newmexico@healthysoilspolicy.org),” according to the website.

Click on a state in the map to explore and learn more!