/04 Soil Testing: A Proven Diagnostic Tool

Soil testing is being under-utilized in the developing world, but data show it puts money in farmers pockets even when the relatively high cost of a complete analysis is considered. Developing the system to truly meet a farmers needs is both practical and feasible. It is difficult to determine who exactly began the science of soil test-ing. Certainly, Europeans such as Justin von Liebig, famed for theLaw of the Minimum, and Jean Baptiste Boussingault, sometimes referred to as the father of modern agricultural chemistry, would be can-didates as founding fathers. Since then, several scientists during the late 1920s and early 1930s, including those well known by their analytical methods such as Bray, Morgan, Spurway, and Truog, advanced soil test-ing by showing the importance of measuring labile or available rather than total plant nutrient contents. In terms of service, one of the earli-est laboratories established to analyze large numbers of farmers ’ samples was developed in the early 1940s by J.W. Fitts in Nebraska. Today, around 4 to 5 million (M) soil samples are analyzed annually in North America alone, in both private and state operated facilities