10. Twenty other states have legislatively designated State Soils.

9. In preparation for the 2006 World Congress of Soil Science in Philadelphia, PA and a planned Soils Exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania should be represented with an Official State Soil.

8. Education- Soil is mentioned more than 20 times in the Pennsylvania Academic standards for Environmental Education. We need a way to interest educators and students in learning about soils.

7. We can’t grow greener or grow smarter if we don’t understand the value, functions, and care of our soil resources.

6. Pennsylvania Agriculture and Forestry depend on our soil resources. Essentially, all life depends upon the soil ... There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together." --- Charles E. Kellogg, USDA Yearbook of Agriculture , 1938

5. The soil resources of Pennsylvania are fragile and limited. Many soils are steep, stony, shallow, droughty, wet or highly erodible. We need to understand soil potentials, limitations and capabilities and manage each soil according to its capabilities. "Man has only a thin layer of soil between himself and starvation." --- attributed to Bard of Cincinnati

4. Soils provide valuable environmental functions- every drop of water runs over or through the soil, soils store water, reduce runoff, provide nutrients to plants, recycle residue and nutrients, store carbon, filter and degrade pollutants.

3. We need to emphasize how the economy of Pennsylvania depends on our care of the soil- "The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself." --- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

2. To improve the understanding of the value of soil to our lives. "A soil is not a pile of dirt. It is a transformer, a body that organizes raw materials into tissue. These are the tissues that become the mother to all organic life." William Bryant Logan, Dirt, The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth.

1. We all depend on the soil for our survival including the other state symbols– the Whitetail Deer, Mountain Laurel, Hemlock, Ruffed Grouse, Milk and even the Brook Trout.