Agriculture has a major influence on the environment such as non-point pollution and environmental degradation as it accounts for a great proportion of land and water use in the globe. Management on soil quality and land quality is the core of developing sustainable agriculture.

As the agricultural influences are not directly measured, many indicators have been developed. This paper critically reviewed various indicators related to soil quality and land quality such as environment indicators, agri-environment indicators (AEIs); catchment health indicators, sustainable land management (SLM), land quality indicators (LQIs), soil quality indicators (SQIs) etc. Three main disadvantages are pointed out for these indicators: [1] Most of the proposed indicators are strongly technical in focus, with neither close link to management decisions nor to the socio-economic issues. So, they very difficult to be applied by policymakers and farmers. [2] The quality of soil, land, water and other environment resources vary with the time and scale, however, the temporal-spatial differentially indicators are lack. [3]Most of them reflect the long term and regional level change of soil, land and environment, so they has less significance of guidance on every year farm agricultural practices. So they are best thought of as a source of information.

This paper proposes an indicator system for the soil quality and land quality for irrigated agriculture in North China Plain, which is based on geo-referenced agricultural practice simulation system, attempts to link both policy makers and farmers and to reflect the temporal and spatial characteristics of change of soil quality and land quality. It can be used to guide both regional and farm level agricultural practices.