A systematic review of the economic viability of soil stewardship

The adoption of soil stewardship practices have been long advocated for given their potential to enhance soil health and farm performance. Whilst decisions regarding the adoption of these practices by individual farmers are impacted by a plethora of internal and external factors, farmer perceptions towards the economic viability of these practices are an important consideration. This reflects the common farming preference for practices which either enhance their financial returns and/or reduce financial risk. This study sought to enhance the understanding of the economic viability of alternative soil stewardship practices for individual farmers through a systematic literature review and evaluation of the published research on the topic. This review focused on the outcomes of almost 100 published, empirical studies relating to dryland, broadacre farming within Australia and other equivalent regions internationally. During the search process, many research papers were excluded given their focus on assessing the impact of soil stewardship practices on soil health and/or productivity and failure to include detailed financial information with this analysis. Whilst few studies reported negative financial outcomes from soil stewardship, less than half of the studies identified reported that the practices had a positive impact on farm financial performance. Most studies reported mixed results with the financial outcomes from soil stewardship being influenced by crop choice, the choice of financial outcome, temporal and other factors. The ability to reach confident conclusions regarding the financial viability of alternative soil stewardship practices was impacted by a number of factors. This included the wide spread of financial performance metrics assessed across the literature; the limited comparability in the approaches taken to measure these metrics; inconsistent use of discounted cash flow techniques; and limited assessment of the impact of soil stewardship on the different dimensions of farm risk.