soil bank

6.6

A government plan that pays farmers to rest fields and grow plants to improve soil

noun
/sɔɪl bæŋk/

Archaic

: banco de tierras

Many farmers placed their marginal fields into the soil bank to take advantage of the subsidies.

Examples

The soil bank program aimed to reduce surpluses while preventing soil erosion.
The government established a soil bank to improve farmland health.
By enrolling in the soil bank, he helped improve the land’s fertility over time.
Farmers can enroll in the soil bank program this year.
By enrolling in the soil bank, he helped improve the land's fertility over time.
Many farmers placed their marginal fields into the soil bank to take advantage of the subsidies.
The soil bank program aimed to reduce surpluses while preventing soil erosion.

Surface Forms

soil bank singular

soil banks plural

Morphology

soil + bank

While 'soil' + 'bank' suggests a reserve or stored supply of soil, the MWE denotes a specific agricultural policy (retiring farmland and paying subsidies) that is not directly inferable from the literal constituents. The connection to the word 'bank' as a reserve gives a partial clue, but the programmatic/policy sense requires domain knowledge, so it is not fully transparent to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Soil bank uses soil and bank as a simple picture: farmers 'take land out of farming' and let the ground rest, like saving soil in a bank. That's why the term now means a 'program' where fields are set aside and farmers get 'payments' while the soil recovers.