Indigenous Soil Stewardship Is Foundational Science
Hopi farmer Michael Kotutwa Johnson and coauthor Emily Rockey call for agriculture to credit Indigenous soil knowledge—and support the communities that sustain it.
Editor's Note
Adapted by Soil Health Exchange from Michael Kotutwa Johnson and Emily Rockey’s 2026 commentary, with additional conservation-program evidence and context from their research.
After the corn harvest, Michael Kotutwa Johnson leaves the stalks in the field. Through winter, they catch snow. The next season, planting between those rows helps the new crop reach the moisture gathered there. A stalk carries part of one season into the next.[1]
Johnson learned this way of reading the land through Hopi farming and his family. In a new commentary with Emily Rockey, he asks agriculture to recognize the knowledge behind such decisions: Indigenous soil stewardship belongs at the foundation of agricultural science.[1]
Their argument reaches from the field to the research paper and the conservation office. Who receives credit for a practice? Whose observations shape a project? Who has the authority and resources to keep that knowledge alive?
A field shaped by generations of observation
Johnson is a Hopi farmer and University of Arizona scholar. In the commentary, he describes raising crops in northeastern Arizona with annual precipitation of 6–10 inches, or roughly 152–254 millimeters. Wind, runoff, winter snow, soil, and the following year's planting all enter his management decisions.[1]
The authors describe place-based knowledge built through long relationships with particular landscapes. Its continuity depends on people observing, adapting, teaching, and planting again. Johnson's account makes those relationships visible in the field.
Crop residue carries water into the next season
The stalks left after harvest return organic material to the soil as they decompose. They also catch winter snow. Planting between the previous year's rows connects residue management with the location of the next crop. Johnson describes these as linked decisions within his farming system.[1]
Field placement connects soil fertility with water flow
Johnson describes deliberately locating fields on alluvial floodplains, where floodwater deposits soil particles and organic matter. In the system he describes, those deposits sustain cropping without added nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium amendments. The field's position in the landscape is part of its fertility management.[1]
Local experience gives a practice its meaning
Row orientation also carries knowledge. Johnson recalls his grandfather teaching him to plant north to south, with attention to the prevailing winds and seasonal water movement. The practical lesson for a reader is to study how a field receives and retains water, and to learn from the people who understand that landscape. Decisions about residue, planting, and fertility follow from those conditions.[1]
Give the knowledge its history—and its credit
Johnson and Rockey challenge accounts that begin the history of regenerative agriculture with recent terminology and organizations. They point to Indigenous contributions to practices such as contour farming, terracing, and soil–water management that predate modern conservation frameworks.[1]
That changes how agricultural knowledge should be taught and cited. A technical description can explain what a practice does while also naming the people and traditions that developed it. Accurate attribution keeps the relationship between a practice, its place, and its knowledge holders in view.
For Johnson and Rockey, recognition also means supporting Indigenous-led stewardship. A community's ability to continue farming, teach the next generation, and shape conservation work belongs in the discussion alongside the physical condition of its soils.[1]
Recognition has a funding dimension
Johnson's earlier research with Matthew Rowe, Aaron Lien, and Laura López-Hoffman examined how Indigenous agricultural knowledge fits within USDA conservation programs. Their 2021 paper identified a historical participation gap in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).[2]
A historical gap in conservation participation
Measure
Share
EQIP and CSP contracts awarded to American Indian farms, FY2017
2%
American Indian farms as a share of U.S. farms in the study’s comparison
2.9%
Source: Johnson and colleagues (2021). Contract share and farm share use different denominators; these are historical participation figures.[2]
The authors also identified barriers involving application procedures, land tenure, and the process for recognizing Indigenous management practices. Together, the figures and those institutional barriers help explain why Johnson's argument includes how conservation programs are designed.[2]
The NRCS manual's October 2024 guidance describes Alternative Funding Arrangements as a way for tribes and the agency to negotiate conservation projects, funding, and administration. It allows traditional ecological knowledge and cultural methods within arrangements that meet the purposes of the relevant conservation standards. Tribes can develop their own conservation plans under these agreements.[3]
This creates a practical place to apply the authors' argument: involve tribal leadership in defining the work and its outcomes, and fund the people who will carry it out. Tribes and NRCS agree on project terms and funding within program requirements.[3]
A living science continues to adapt
Johnson's work also includes experiments. A University of Arizona account published in July 2025 describes a three-year Indigenous crop project comparing drip, flood, and subsurface irrigation with an unirrigated control. Rockey's work in the project included tracking plant stress, flowering, and soil moisture.[4]
The account describes a project still awaiting early results. It also records Johnson's questions about changes to a farming system: their long-term cost, the dependencies they create, and their consequences for community life. Those questions make the purpose of research part of the design.[4]
In their 2026 commentary, Johnson and Rockey describe a soil health handbook they are developing for Indigenous and Tribal farmers in arid parts of the Southwest. They frame science as one tool for helping the next generation understand and care for community soils.[1]
Carry the recognition into the work
For farmers, advisers, educators, and researchers, this argument offers a concrete starting point: learn the history of the practices you teach, cite their knowledge holders accurately, and involve Indigenous leadership when work draws on their communities' knowledge. Agree on how that knowledge will be shared and how the community will benefit.
Back in Johnson's field, last year's stalks help gather water for the next planting. The knowledge behind that decision travels through a family, a place, and continued work. Agricultural science has a responsibility to recognize those foundations—and help the people sustaining them carry the work forward.
Source material for every claim in this article, plus a citation-ready record for reference managers and scholarly indexes.
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Reference this work
SHE-ART-2026-0057
Soil Health Exchange (2026). Indigenous Soil Stewardship Is Foundational Science. Soil Health Exchange. SHE-ART-2026-0057. https://soilhealthexchange.com/cite/SHE-ART-2026-0057
Exchange, S. H. (2026). Indigenous Soil Stewardship Is Foundational Science. Soil Health Exchange. https://soilhealthexchange.com/blog/indigenous-soil-stewardship-johnson
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MLA
Exchange, Soil Health. "Indigenous Soil Stewardship Is Foundational Science." Soil Health Exchange, 2026-10-15, https://soilhealthexchange.com/blog/indigenous-soil-stewardship-johnson.
Chicago
Exchange, Soil Health. "Indigenous Soil Stewardship Is Foundational Science." Soil Health Exchange. Published 2026-10-15. https://soilhealthexchange.com/blog/indigenous-soil-stewardship-johnson.
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