A Victorian Government program will help farmers improve the health of their soils.

Visiting the Wimmera Machinery Field Days at Longerenong, Agriculture Minister Joe Helper launched a new postcard and webpages. A Department of Primary Industries’ Healthy Soils project team developed the program to encourage farmers to ask key soil health questions and get answers online.

“Soil health is an important issue to many Victorian farmers, so we are taking action to provide the latest and up-to-date information direct to farmers’ fingertips,” Mr Helper said.

“With almost 100 new pages recently added there is a lot of information on a range of topics, including soil health, soil biology, organic matter, soil type, soil structure, nutrients, pH, erosion, compaction and crusting.

“These pages will assist farmers check the health of their soil, the foundation of productive crops and livestock.”

Mr Helper said in addition to the expanded webpages, a new postcard posed a list of simple questions about soil testing, decision making, groundcover levels, treatment, investment and observations.

“Based on the answers, Victorian farmers can then work out if their soils need some soil health improvements,” he said.

Healthy Soils project leader Mark Imhof said the website focussed on inherent soil properties and ways that soil could be improved and managed.

“The new pages allow users to search by subject, or to work through a series of questions about things they might be seeing in their paddock that may be affecting soil health,” Mr Imhof said.

“The website also contains a wide range of maps and soil surveys carried out in Victoria since the 1940s.

“This includes the most recent Land Resource Assessment of the Wimmera region survey undertaken by Department of Primary Industries in collaboration with the Wimmera Catchment Management Authority.

“The whole idea of the postcard and webpages is to encourage farmers to think about the health of their soils and to investigate ways to improve it.”