Soil Survey benefits

Different surveys serve different purposes.  World wide experience showed that crop growth and yields under irrigation are more directly related to soil than to all other cropping factors combined together.  As we cultivate and irrigate soils - not crops - a soil survey is an investment in knowledge that has the same meaning to an irrigation project as a foundation to a skyscraper.

Benefits of a soil survey :

• Most importantly, to provide the right information regarding the use of the right soils for the right purposes.
• To delineate the good-bad-ugly soils and offer solutions to their problems. This enables adjustments for soil improvements, irrigation systems and management practices to match the soils, as a copy-and-paste system does not work.  Such information should ideally be available before the per-designing and per-investing stage to guide rational decision making.
• A positive response to the appropriate treatments. Some soils will respond readily to certain treatments and others, to the same treatment, will not.  Consequently, some benefits will be immediate, some will occur over time and some will be realized only after many years because soil responses to particular treatments vary by location and potential land use alternatives.
• Predicting whether the suggested treatments are likely to succeed and help you to minimize guesswork that may lead to poor choices, hidden/extra costs, soil damage, additional environmental problems and unwanted publicity.
• On a global scale, most irrigation enterprises cover large areas with significantly different soils that require different practices, yet very rarely are crops, irrigation layouts, fertilizers, chemicals, farm machinery and management practices adjusted accordingly to suit the soils.
• Importantly, different crops have different soil requirements, and as you want to know if your selected crops will work for you, the soil survey will define soil properties that will influence their growth, saving you from costly experiments.
• The cost of a soil survey is very low in comparison to not only the cost of an irrigation project but also to major engineering work such as land preparation, leveling, dams, canals, irrigation systems, storage facilities, drilling, pump station, power line, etc. - all of which can use and will benefit from soil survey information.
• Experience shows that the soil survey cost-benefit ratio is usually in order of 1 to 80, 1 to 150, 1 to 200, 1 to 500 or more.

However, unlike infrastructure, a soil survey is not subject to wear-and-tear or changes in climate, economy, invasion of pests, diseases or water, fertilizers, machinery, labor, chemicals availability and the like.  It is a once in a lifetime investment that will outlive any irrigation project and pay for itself many times over.