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Healthy soil? Bury some undies and find out

The Soil Conservation Council of Canada (SCCC) is encouraging the Canadian public to play in the dirt in honour of National Soil Conservation Week coming up April 16. Launching the entertaining Soil Your Undies campaign, the SCCC wants everyone who cares about soil health to bury a pair of cotton undergarments to witness firsthand the amazing activity that happens right under our feet. In Ontario, the Soil Your Undies project was initiated by the Innovative Farmers Association of Ontario. Now SCCC, in partnership with Stanfield's, is giving this project a national perspective.

The Soil Your Undies experiment provides an indication of how healthy your soil is. After a couple months buried, there shouldn't be much left of your undies if there is good biological activity in your soil. To get started, all you need is a pair of new, 100 per cent white cotton briefs, a shovel, and a flag to mark the site. A helpful step-by-step guide on how to properly Soil Your Undies is available at www.soilcc.ca.

National Soil Conservation Week is an annual event that gives groups like the SCCC, and others who advocate for soil conservation and health, a platform to remind the public of the importance of soil and the issues around its degradation and loss.  To underscore its importance in food production and the role it plays in clean air and water, SCCC will be burying some undies at the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum in Ottawa that will be unearthed at a later date to reveal the degree of biological activity in the soil.

Take video or photos and share your experience on Twitter @SoilCouncil and use the hashtags #SoilYourUndies or #CdnSoilWeek17. The SCCC will present some of the highlights from Soil Your Undies at the next Summit on Canadian Soil Health in Guelph, Ont. on August 22 and 23.

April 11, 2017  By Top Crop Manager