CALCULATING THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF SOIL SURVEY

A farmer (or other users of land) achieves greatest net return by using each soil for the crop and management which gives maximum return. A soil map indicates the boundaries between soils requiring different management for optimum returns. The benefits from a soil survey increase with the ‘purity’ of the soil units as mapped. The cost of soil survey increases sharply with the ‘purity’ to be achieved. So it is necessary to recognize the stage beyond which the costs of yet more detailed soil survey are unlikely to exceed the benefits to be expected from mapping units of greater ‘purity’. This paper reports a simple algorithm for calculating the probable benefits from further soil survey to produce a map of higher ‘purity’ than so far achieved.