Historical Soil Data Program - Southern Cross University

About the program

The Australian Government has engaged Southern Cross University as a data broker for the Historical Soil Data Capture Payments Program to engage with data owners, collate soil test data, and share the data with the Australian Government.

A woman in a field with a notebook and pen

The $21 million Program is a key measure under the National Soil Package. The program pays farmers and land managers to share their historical soil test data with the Australian Government.

Farmers and land managers may be eligible to receive payments of up to $10,000 in exchange for sharing their historical soil information through the program.

The Historical Soil Data Capture Payments Program is part of the National Soil Strategy which aims to build knowledge for land managers to benchmark their soil against regional or type averages.

Better soil data will lead to improved research, technology and policy outcomes and will benefit all Australians.

The Historical Soil Data Capture Payments Program is now closed.

How it works

Southern Cross in partnership with our Environmental Analysis Laboratory will help you to determine if your past soil analysis results meet the eligibility criteria, and make arrangements for your data to be shared with the National Soil Database, and pay you for your contribution.

We help you determine the quality and payment of your soil data

Payment based on the number of soil properties

Soil analysis must have occurred prior to 1 January 2022

Eligibility criteria

A data owner can be a farmer, land manager or an entity that owns soil data. To be eligible, all applicants must be based in Australia and be Australian citizens. Applicants will need to have full ownership of the intellectual property (IP) rights for the historic soil data.

In addition, all applicants must comply with the following participation requirements: agree to sign the data sharing agreement (Data Sharing Deed) required by the Commonwealth to share soil information on the Australian National Soil Information System and complete a qualitative survey with information about land and management practices to help administer the program (this information will not be published on ANSIS or be linked to a data owner’s soil information).

Data owners can receive a payment based on the number of eligible soil properties (i.e. physical, chemical and biological soil characteristics) tested per sample, and metadata (i.e. geographical location, soil sampling techniques, etc.) as follows:

$50 – 5 soil properties
$100 – between 6 and 10 soil properties
$150 – between 11 and 15 soil properties
$200 – more than 16 soil properties

Each eligible business or individual could receive up to $10,000 in total. If a business or individual has data valued at more than $10,000, as data brokers Southern Cross University will assist in prioritising what data sets the Department is most interested in accessing.

Get in touch

soildata@scu.edu.au Read more about the program