'A flop': Labor cans former govt's $54m farmer soil grant program

Nationals leader David Littleproud, who introduced the program while in government, said the soil con job was "disgraceful", however Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said his predecessor's idea "was a flop" because he failed to consult the industry.

The Soil Monitoring Incentive Program offered $10,000 to farmers to get their soil tested, along with an expert to interpret the test results, in exchange for sharing the information with a national soil database.

But the two-year program was cancelled after just nine months.

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Nationals leader David Littleproud slammed Senator Watt for praising the importance of soil health just weeks before cutting the program.

"Labor's decision to end the SMIP is disgraceful and it reflects their contempt for our farmers," Mr Littleproud said.

"This pilot was about supporting farmers to make informed and evidence-based decisions on their land, as well as providing invaluable soil information to researchers."

However, a Department of Agriculture spokesperson said the pilot had low uptake, despite improvements made to streamline and prompt participation.

"There were only a small number of applications...since the pilot started in March 2022, very few sampling jobs have been completed," the spokesperson said.

"One of the major reasons is that the locations of the successful applicants experienced extremely wet weather and flooding. Sampling rigs and equipment cannot operate effectively in these conditions."

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Senator Watt said the program "was a flop" because Mr Littleproud failed to consult farmers about what sort of soil scheme they wanted.

"It was grossly unsubscribed by farmers... they weren't interested in participating in a scheme when they weren't even asked what would work best," Senator Watt said.

"In contrast, we're in the process of consulting farmers, environmentalists and a whole range of other people about what sorts of programs we should introduce to build soil health, and we will be putting funding to those programs."