Authentic analysis and prospects for the development of the concept of “Soil health”

Abstract

Goal. Based on an authentic analysis of the modern concept of the scientific term “soil health”, to specify its conceptual content with coverage of the development and prospects of further domestic scientific research in the context of the implementation of the global strategy of the International Episodic Bureau (IEB), the World Health Organization (WHO), FAO “Unified Health”. Methods. Structurally functional, informational, comparative, logistic, and analytical. Results. Analysis of the modern concept of the term “soil health” made it possible to identify some discrepancies in the interpretation of this concept, to specify the content, and to evaluate its attribution, novelty, and prospects of research. To this day, the cognitive process has been significantly updated to assess the modern agroecological state of the soils of Ukraine, their quality, “pathology”, resistance against degradation, poisoning, pollution, contamination, and landscape distortion of arable, meadow-pasture, park-garden, residential, and other land plots. One of the anomalous factors of this is the hostilities that have engulfed the lion’s share of Ukrainian lands, in particular fertile black soil, poisoning them with explosives and littering them with fragments of shells, mines, and military equipment. A description of the modern definition of “soil health” as an important component of “soil quality” is given, emphasizing the need to take into account soil pathology in the land management system. The general design of the soil system, especially its active components (colloidal complex and “living phase”), as attributes of the quality and health of the soil “body”, its stable functioning, and self-reproduction are characterized. The perspective of improvement of methods for assessing the quality and health of soils, their functional stability, and post-war restoration of land plots, taking into account the degree of their degradation, is shown. Conclusions. The content of the definition of “soil health” as an important component of its quality has been clarified, the axiology (significance) of the buffer capacity and suppressiveness of soils as important indicators of their functional stability (“immunity”), quality status, “health”, and effective fertility have been substantiated. The perspective of the study “soil health” in the mode of the strategy “Unified Health” (according to the trophic chain “soil — plant — animal — man”) as an important direction for solving the problem of scientific support for state and public control of the qualitative and healthy state of soils, and compliance with agrotechnological regulations for the production of safe food and feed for health was noted.