Advancing Research on Agricultural Soil Health Act of 2025

Summary

Requires the Department of Agriculture to create and maintain standardized, science-based methods and tools to measure, monitor, report, and model soil carbon and related soil health variables. The bill funds technical assistance, a national soil carbon inventory with repeat sampling, on-farm demonstration projects, and predictive modeling tools that estimate greenhouse gas and soil carbon impacts of land-management practices; it includes data-protection rules and requires public reporting and regular updates.

• USDA must create a standardized, science-based method to directly measure soil carbon within 270 days and provide multilingual guidance for voluntary producer reporting.
• A national Soil Carbon Inventory and Analysis Network will sample eligible lands every 5 years, maintain a soil characteristics inventory, and publish aggregated public reports and benchmarks.
• Predictive modeling tools will estimate the impacts of land-management practices on carbon, methane, nitrous oxide, and soil carbon, anchored to direct measurements and subject to annual review.
• Adds soil carbon measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification to competitive agricultural research priorities to support science and innovation.
• Authorizes recurring annual funding: $2.0M for methodology support, $17.5M for the inventory network, and $0.5M for predictive modeling.
• Private-land participation in the inventory is voluntary, requires owner consent, and individual producer data cannot be sold; aggregated data will be publicly released.
• Expands on-farm demonstration authorities to explicitly include soil health systems and soil carbon sequestration projects with a five-year timeframe.
• Requires consultation and partnership across federal agencies, land-grant institutions, researchers, nonprofits, private experts, and diverse agricultural producers, including socially disadvantaged producers.