State Healthy Soil Policy Map

The US State Soil Health Policy Map is a crowd-sourced policy tracker designed to support the growth of healthy soil and related policies by sharing frameworks and lessons learned. Click on a state and read below to learn more!

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

mail the state curator at <state>@healthysoilspolicy.org (ex: newmexico@healthysoilspolicy.org).

State-by-State Policy Information

Alabama – Alaska – Arizona – Arkansas – California – Colorado – Connecticut – Delaware – Florida – Georgia – Hawaii – Idaho – Illinois – Indiana – Iowa – Kansas – Kentucky – Louisiana – Maine – Maryland – Massachusetts – Michigan – Minnesota – Mississippi – Missouri – Montana – Nebraska – Nevada – New Hampshire – New Jersey – New Mexico – New York – North Carolina – North Dakota – Ohio – Oklahoma – Oregon – Pennsylvania – Rhode Island – South Carolina – South Dakota – Tennessee – Texas – Utah – Vermont – Virginia – Washington – West Virginia – Wisconsin – Wyoming –  Puerto Rico

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Legislative Status Update

Through February 24, 2025, 27 states have passed Healthy Soils legislation, and Pennsylvania is implementing a Soil Health Program through existing statute. These 28 states include 63.7% of U.S. farm acreage (560,549,684 of 880,100,848 acres, based upon 2022 National Agricultural Statistics Service Agricultural Census), and 63.2% of U.S. state population (209,142,612 of 330,759,736 people, based upon 2020 Census).

Of these 28 states (AZ, CA, CO, CT, HI, IL, LA, MA, MI, MD, ME, MN, MT, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OK, OR, PA, SD, TX, UT, VT, WA, and WV), all have established— or authorized state agencies to establish—soil health programs with implementation incentives, except:

Hawaii (in 2022 legislation passed to create program, but vetoed), and

Nebraska (technical, training and legal assistance program, but not incentives)

The states that have created soil health programs are:

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington

The states that have empowered state agencies to create soil health programs are:

Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia

Note that though many of these states empower state agencies to create soil health programs, there are efforts to pass legislation to put such programs in state statutes and to establish reliable funding for those programs. Of the bills filed in 2024, the bills in 6 states (Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and New Jersey) create a soil health program or add soil health to existing programs. Also, Kansas has effectively created and is funding the Kansas Soil Health Initiative in the annual budget, but has not yet established the program in statute.

For more information on each state, visit the individual state Policy Information in the next section. 

These maps reflect the progress of Soil Health Policies from 2019 through 2025. The green color represents a state that has enacted at least one soil health policy. If the name of the state is highlighted in blue, but the rest is green, it represents a new soil health bill pending during that year.

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Related Resources

• FEDERAL SOIL HEALTH BILL TRACKER
  • This resource is provided for members of the National Healthy Soils Policy Network and our allies. Please do not share publicly without permission. For updates, corrections, or questions, please contact dago@calclimateag.org
• DIRECTORY OF EXISTING STATE HEALTHY SOILS PROGRAMS
• CLIMATE AND AGRICULTURE LEGISLATION ROUNDUP
  Compiled in October 2020 by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)
• CLIMATE SOLUTIONS FOR FARMERS: INVEST IN PROVEN FEDERAL PROGRAMS
  Report on carbon markets by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)
• BRIDGING NON-TRADITIONAL STAKEHOLDERS
  • From Farm to City: Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide with Farmer-Friendly Climate Policy Advocacy, CalCAN 
  • Healthy Soils, Healthy Communities: Opportunities to Bridge Environmental Justice and Soil Carbon Sequestration, Food First, Silvestri Strategies, Carbon Cycle Institute
• POLICY GUIDANCE
  • Article: Farming for Our Future: Six Critical Findings on Climate Change and Agriculture, Peter H. Lehner & Nathan A. Rosenberg, Center for Health, Law and Policy at Harvard Law School
  • Book: Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture, Peter H. Lehner & Nathan A. Rosenberg, ELI Press 2021
  • Soil Health Policy Guidebook: Developing Community-Driven State Soil Health Policy and Programs, Yale Center for Business and the Environment’s Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, November 2021. With an accompanying social media toolkit.
  • Innovative State-Led Efforts to Finance Agricultural Conservation, EDF and NASDA
  • Soil Health Policy Resources, the Soil Health Institute 
  • State & Local Soil Health Strategies: Building Soil Health Policy from the Ground Up,  Izaak Walton League of America
  • United States Mid Century Strategy for Deep Decarbonization, The White House November 2016
  • Healthy Soils Law Project, Farm and Energy Initiative, Vermont Law School
  • Progress Report on the California Healthy Soils Program and accompanying webinar, December 2020
  • Organizing for Soil Health: A Project of the Northeast Organic Farming Association April 2020
• FINANCE & AGRICULTURAL MARKETS
  • Cost Model for Carbon Farm Plans, David Krevitt Nerds for Earth
  • Farmland Access Decision Making Tool, Land Stewardship Project
  • Finding Farmland Calculator, a mortgage calculator by National Young Farmers and USDA
  • NRCS and Investment Capital: Investing in America Together, A report by Encourage Capital 
  • Whole Farm Planning Model, Ohio State University Extension
• SCIENTIFIC PAPERS
  • The Regenerative Agriculture and Human Health Nexus: Insights from Field to Body, David LeZaks and Mandy Ellerton, Croatan Institute
  • Negative Emissions and Land-Based Carbon Sequestration Implications for Climate and Energy Scenarios, Aman Chitkara, Emily McGlynn
  • Pesticides and Soil Health, a scientific brief by Friends of the Earth
  • The potential of agricultural land management to contribute to lower global surface temperatures, Allegra Mayer, Zeke Hausfather, Andrew D. Jones, Whendee L. Silver
• TECHNICAL GUIDANCE
  • CARBON FARM PLANNING: Step by Step Guidance, Lynette Nieburgge Marin RCD and Jeff Creque Carbon Cycle Institute
  • COMET PLANNER: Carbon and greenhouse gas evaluation for NRCS conservation practice planning,  Amy Swan Colorado State University
  • A Soil Health Champion’s Guide to Virtual Farm Tours, New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group
• COMPOSTING
  • US Composting Council
  • Institute for Local Self Reliance
• Movies
  • Gather
  • Kiss The Ground Movie
  • Farmer’s Footprint –Short Film
  • Grass Farmers –Short Film

Media

US House and Senate Committee Maps –Use these maps to see if your elected US House or Senate representative serves on the Agriculture or Natural Resources Committee.

Adoption of Soil Health Systems Based on Data from the 2017 U.S. Census of Agriculture, prepared by the Soil Health Institute

Website

A new website promises to help rebalance our climate — using dirt By Carbon180

The timing of this new resource couldn’t be better. As the conversation about climate change gains momentum, regenerative agriculture is moving into the mainstream.”

“A new website is tracking soil health policy across the US, with the goal of supporting state healthy soil activities and helping enact state policy. Launched by volunteer organization Nerds for Earth and climate-focused nonprofit Soil4Climate, and with support from the Carbon Project, the site is built on crowdsourced data, with curators from each state serving to update and maintain it. With the stroke of a mouse, one can find healthy soil and agriculture policies broken down by each state, a legislative database for the 2019 session, and other related resources — policy guidance, technical guidance, agricultural markets, scientific papers, grant funding, and more.

Links

Soil4Climate Legislative Database

National Healthy Soils Policy Network

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