OPEN SOURCE SOIL HEALTH MONITORING KIT

Smallholder farmers and supporting organizations often lack affordable, locally maintainable tools for relating soil measurements to management practices. We present a modular, open-source soil-health monitoring kit developed through participatory prototyping in Mendoza, Argentina. It integrates open hardware, accessible analytical protocols, interoperable data collection, and software for data integration and visualization. The main outcome is a documented, reproducible prototype covering the workflow from sampling and contextual data collection to analysis and interpretation. Hardware openness alone proved insufficient: reproducible protocols, contextualized ontologies, data interoperability, and participatory learning are equally important for community based science, FAIRer data practices, and agroecological commons.