Globally, soil policy and management have been based on a limited understanding of values and perspectives, and mainly dominated by a Western-centric soil science perspective. Further, this understanding has tended to be highly focused on instrumental values—particularly the soil’s productive potential and use. In this paper, we use the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) to analyse how Aotearoa New Zealand’s agricultural productive sectors express their relationship with soil and soil health. Our analysis highlights the multidimensional nature of soil values across society. Importantly, the results are consistent with work undertaken on Indigenous Māori perspectives of soil and soil health. Māori perspectives strongly connect soil to their people and take a holistic or well-being approach to soil. We then present a soil health and well-being framework that can incorporate a plurality of values from people of diverse backgrounds, including landowners, industry, farmers, and Indigenous peoples. We use a bi-cultural model approach—“waka taurua”—to demonstrate how the plurality of values from non-Indigenous and Indigenous groups in Aotearoa New Zealand can be used to shape process, dialogue and understanding, to develop shared goals to maintain and enhance the soil resource, and to achieve soil health and human well-being. There needs to be a shift in how soil policy and management is approached to achieve international calls to manage soils sustainably. Our approach using the NFF indicates that people assign multiple, co-existing values to soil. The resulting dialogue on values enriches our understanding of soils and soil health, and our relationships and connections with nature, improves the way we define threats and risks, and will lead to more targeted actions to achieve desired sustainable outcomes.

在全球范围内，土壤政策和管理一直基于对价值观和观点的有限理解，并且主要由以西方为中心的土壤科学观点主导。此外，这种理解往往高度关注工具价值——尤其是土壤的生产潜力和用途。在本文中，我们使用自然未来框架 (NFF) 来分析 Aotearoa 新西兰的农业生产部门如何表达它们与土壤和土壤健康的关系。我们的分析强调了整个社会土壤价值的多维性质。重要的是，结果与土着毛利人对土壤和土壤健康的观点所开展的工作是一致的。毛利人的观点将土壤与他们的人民紧密联系在一起，并对土壤采取整体或福祉的方法。然后，我们提出了一个土壤健康和福祉框架，该框架可以纳入来自不同背景的人们的多种价值观，包括土地所有者、工业、农民和土著人民。我们使用双文化模型方法——“waka taurua”——来展示新西兰 Aotearoa 非土著和土著群体的多元价值观如何用于塑造流程、对话和理解，以制定共同目标以维护和增强土壤资源，实现土壤健康和人类福祉。需要改变土壤政策和管理的方式，以实现国际社会对可持续管理土壤的呼吁。我们使用 NFF 的方法表明人们为土壤分配了多个共存的值。由此产生的价值观对话丰富了我们对土壤和土壤健康的理解，