Exploring how farmers’ perceptions of soil health affect their management decisions

View the project final report

Commodities

• Agronomic: corn, soybeans

Practices

• Crop Production: cover crops
• Education and Training: focus group, networking, participatory research, workshop
• Natural Resources/Environment: indicators
• Soil Management: soil quality/health

While soil health is proven to have wide-ranging benefits and is of increasing interest to farmers and agricultural stakeholders, there is still relatively low adoption of soil health practices (e.g. cover crops, no-till, crop rotations) on Midwest row crop farms. We predict that one reason for limited adoption is that soil health is an abstract idea with long-term returns, and that farmers may lack concrete strategies by which to improve and evaluate soil health. Most studies investigating farmers’ perceptions either focus on a specific practice, rather than soil health more broadly, or use a single method, which makes it challenging to describe both the breadth and depth of farmers’ engagement with soil health. To address this gap, we used surveys, interviews, and mental models to describe how Michigan farmers understand, evaluate, and manage for soil health. We found that Michigan farmers believe in the benefits of soil health, identify many properties that impact it, and are particularly focused on its impact on yield and water management. Many Michigan farmers believe they are taking steps to improve the health of the soils they farm, which was reflected in their per use of no-till and cover crops, as well as other practices. Despite the broad belief and value for soil health, it can be challenging for farmers to link soil health to management decisions. Farmers primarily evaluated soil health through traditional agronomic soil tests, yield, and qualitative indicators (e.g., yield, crop coloration, soil texture), yet several farmers also described how comparisons across soil types can be problematic and, thus, make it challenging to connect soil health to management. This study emphasizes a need for regionally-defined soil health benchmarks that can guide management decisions, as well as increased research about how management affects particular soil properties, rather than “soil health” alone.

The three learning outcomes for this project included: 1) increase the academic community’s knowledge of how farmers’ soil health mental models inform their management decisions, 2) increase awareness and knowledge of farmer mental models and resources for agricultural advisors, and 3) simplify the complicated ‘soil health’ concept for farmers in the eastern Midwest corn belt. This project also had two primary action outcomes: 1) agricultural advisors will improve their practices by incorporating farmer soil health mental models into their training and outreach activities and 2) we will help enhance networks between agricultural stakeholders in southwest Michigan.