"Healthy soils practices" means systems of agricultural, forestry, and land management practices that:
(1) improve the health of soils, including, but not limited to, consideration of depth of topsoil horizons, water infiltration rate, water-holding capacity, organic matter content, biologically accessible nutrient content, bulk density, biological activity, and biological and microbiological diversity;(2) follow the principles of: minimizing soil disturbance and external inputs; keeping soil covered; maximizing biodiversity; diversifying crop rotations; maximizing presence of living roots; integrating animals and insects into land management, including grazing animals, birds, beneficial insects, or keystone species, such as earthworms; and incorporating the context of local conditions in decision-making, including, for example, soil type, topography, and time of year; and(3) include practices such as conservation tillage or no-till, cover-cropping, perennialization of highly erodible land, precision nitrogen and phosphorus application, managed grazing, integrated crop-livestock systems, silvopasture, agroforestry, perennial crops, integrated pest management, nutrient best management practices, invasive species removal and the planting of native species and those practices recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service - Field Office Technical Guide.Added by P.A. 103-0494,§ 15, eff. 8/4/2023.