TY - JOUR T1 - Geographic differences in the validity of a linear scale of innate soil productivity JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 379 LP - 382 VL - 45 IS - 3 AU - P. J. Gersmehl AU - D. A. Brown Y1 - 1990/05/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/45/3/379.abstract N2 - PLANT the best, save the rest.” This familiar idea has acquired new legal meaning as a result of the sod-buster, swampbuster, and conservation reserve provisions of the 1985 Food Security Act. Identifying the best land is, unfortunately, an unfinished task. Important criteria include productivity, workability, erodibility, accessibility, contiguity, and management history. A look at only the first of these factors allows one to evaluate the potential usefulness of some common procedures for ranking soils according to their “innate productivity.” A good (reliable and easy to determine) index of soil productivity clearly would be useful for many groups of people: landowners deciding how to use their land; tax assessors appraising rural property (2, 16); municipalities zoning land to influence its use (22); planners aligning utility corridors (4, 15); foresters and wildlife biologists trying to evaluate sustainable yield (3, 17); the U.S. Department of Agriculture targeting regions for price supports, conservation practices, or land-retirement programs (1, 21); rural sociologists and others trying to designate prime farmland for protection of a way of life (19); financiers assessing the feasibility of development projects (18); and soil scientists trying to provide accurate information to all of the above groups (5, 10, 20). … ER -