This dataset is the raw data that belongs to a peer-reviewed study on the small-distance variability of soil organic carbon in agricultural soils in Germany. It consists of three different files. The first file gives the coordinates of the 16 soil cores that were taken at each of the 16 sites (eight cropland and eight grassland sites). The second file gives the soil properties measured at each individual core (n=16 per site) and the third file the soil properties measured at each indivdual soil profile (n=6 per site).