  In this paper, I reply to the recent article by Jeffery and Verheijen (2020)
'A new soil health policy paradigm: Pay for practice not performance!'. While
expressing support for their call for a more pronounced role of soil protection
in agri-environmental policy, I critically discuss the two main elements of
their specific proposal: its emphasis of the concept of soil health and the
recommendation to use action-based payments as the main policy instrument. I
argue for using soil functions as a more established concept (and thus more
adequate for policy purposes), which is also informationally richer than soil
health. Furthermore, I provide a more differentiated discussion of the relative
advantages and disadvantages of result-based and action-based payments, while
addressing the specific criticisms towards the former that Jeffery and
Verheijen voice. Also, I suggest an alternative approach (a hybrid model-based
scheme) that addresses the limitations of both Jeffery and Verheijen's own
proposal and the valid criticisms they direct at result-based payments.
