Soil health and soil management decision-making in the mid-Atlantic.

Soil health and soil management decision-making in the mid-Atlantic.

Summary

The purpose of this project is to understand how farmers make soil management decisions and in turn what those decisions do to support or constrain agricultural and environmental sustainability on their particular farms and more broadly in the mid-Atlantic region. By examining how farmers make soil management decisions in context, this project will articulate a novel and full accounting of constraints that limit the adoption and practicability of sustainable farming in the environmental hotspot of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The project’s overarching goal is to examine the systemic interlinkages between farmer decision-making and soil health in relation to economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Objectives/Performance Targets

There are four objectives to this project as listed below. Progress has been made under objective 1, as this is mostly to do with generating and collating data which is the precursor to obejctives 2,3 & 4.

1) To examine and describe the farmer-soil relationship for each case, which includes:
a. a holistic description of the farmer soil management decision-making process;
b. analysis and description of the physical, biological and chemical properties of the specific farm soil;
c. analysis of the interaction of a & b above.

PROGRESS: completion of four two-day in-depth, on-farm farmer interviews, identification and invitation of snowball interviewees deriving from in-depth interviews, completion of 16 shorter ‘snowball’ telephone interviews, soil sampling and analysis at four farms and desk research to compile over 50 texts and archival materials related to the four core farm cases. Transcription of three of four in-depth interviews has been completed. Not yet completed: Transcription of 16 shorter interviews, focus groups at each farm and analysis of the interaction of social and physical aspects.

2) To analyze the networked connections between ‘actors’ (or influencers) typically confined to the boxes of social, economic or environmental forces.

Analysis has not yet begun.

3) To interpret emergent patterns across the discreet cases;

Analysis has not yet begun.

4) To present this analysis in appropriate form to farmer-participants, policy makers, researchers and the wider public [post-dissertation].

Dissemination has not yet begun.

Accomplishments/Milestones

The project is off to a very good start. The four farmers that form the core cases of the study have been extensively interviewed in person including farm walks and participatory photography. Their fields have been sampled and the soil tests performed at Cornell using the holistic Cornell Soil Health Test. The in-depth interviews led to identification of others who influence the farmer’s decision making, such as spouses, parents, seed and machine sales reps, regional and national farming groups, workshop leaders, and other farmer friends. These 16 influential others where invited to short telephone interviews lasting about a half hour to discuss their specific expertise or role that affected the core farmer by whom they were identified. Desk research following interviews uncovered over 50 documents, news articles, videos and the like that relate specifically to each farm case. All of this work helps build an understanding of how these particular farmers make soil management decisions and what those decisions mean for their farm’s soil.

The delay in processing funds through the University has been a minor setback for completing focus group research as desired in the Fall. This work will now be completed in the Winter of 2014.

Coming up in the next four months, focus groups will be convened near each of the four farm core cases, transcription of all audio will be completed, and analysis of each individual farm case will be followed by a final core-farmer in-person interview to discuss the initial analysis and findings with the farmer.

Completion of analysis across all farms is expected in Summer 2014 followed by dissemination to policy makers, academia and popular outlets.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

While it is certainly too early to claim any impacts from the study, the knowledge generated through the past few months’ activities are setting the stage to create a full accounting of the constraints on farmers when it comes to how they manage the soil. This full accounting will have an impact in how policy can be crafted to properly incentivize farmers to best care for the soil. The knowledge gained over the past few months will also create a lay publication with an eye to enhancing the public’s understanding of the complex interaction of food-farmer-markets-policy-environmental-and human health. It is also working toward an interdisciplinary discussion of how social, economic, biological and physical aspects intertwine to enable (or not) the implementation of ‘best management practices.’  

Collaborators: