Agricultural advisers and the transition to sustainable soil management in England: a focus on agronomists' understanding of soil.

Knowledge sharing and adoption behaviour: An imperative to promote sustainable soil use and management

Biochar for sustainable soil management

Reducing poverty and attaining zero hunger and adequate nourishment are critical concerns con-fronting agronomic planners globally. Enhancing various agronomic methods, which significantly impact crop growth and output, is urgently required to achieve this objective. Soil deterioration has transpired globally due to soil pollution, eroding, salinity, and acidity. The intense farming practices devoid of sustainable practices have resulted in deteriorating soil quality, destruction of land, and significant environmental issues. Future initiatives to feed the expanding population should focus on enhancing agricultural output within sustainable ecosystems. Creative measures are essential in this context since conventional policies are insufficient to address these difficulties. The work pro-posed Sustainable Soil and Crop Management Practices (SS-CMP) to boost Crop Productivity (CP) and Soil Properties (SP). This includes Nutritional Management (NM), Location-Specific Nutrient Management (LSNM), Comprehensive Nutrition Management (CNM), Comprehensive Fertility Management (CFM) for soil, Comprehensive Soil-Crop Governance (CSCG), Sustainable Water Use (SWU), Agricultural Conservation (AC), Sustainable Soil Management (SSM), vertical cultivation, combined CMP, breeding methods, and additional methodologies amalgamated with scientific and behavioral modifications. Minimizing the use of substances, including herbicides and pesticides, and enhancing the effectiveness of agricultural supply use might reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) and safeguard biodiversity. SS-CMP offers potential benefits for humanity and the World, and its success relies on the collaboration of both rich and developing countries to pursue a shared vision of producing more food with less ecological impact.

Soil and water are the essence of life and are essential for food production, and for urban, industrial and recreational infrastructures. It is a known fact that soils are degraded and desertified by natural and anthropogenic factors, and also due to abrupt climate changes. Thus, soil must be used in such a way as to protect, enhance and restore its functions. The survival of a projected 9.5 billion people by 2050 depends on sustainable management of world soils. Sustainability implies maintenance and enhancement of soil quality through judicious land use, recommended soil management practices and conservation‐effective measures. The strategy is to enhance net primary production and agronomic yields per unit area, input and time through sustainable intensification by conservation tillage, mulch farming, complex cropping/farming systems including cover cropping and agroforestry, integrated nutrient management, disease‐suppressive soils, drip irrigation or subirrigation, condensation irrigation, precision or soil‐specific farming, delivering plant nutrients and water directly to the roots and so on. These practices enhance soil quality and its ecosystem services, whereas increase in soil and ecosystem C pools also adapts to and mitigates climate change. As a win‐win strategy, it enhances the environment, advances food security and promotes sustainable development. Key Concepts: Sustainable intensification: It implies producing more from less while reducing the environmental foot print of agro ecosystems. The aim is to minimize losses of the inputs (fertilizers, water, and energy) and enhance use efficiency. Soil quality restoration: Term ‘soil quality’ refers to the productive capacity of soil. Quality of soil under agro ecosystems is prone to degradation by land misuse and soil mismanagement. Thus, achieving sustainable management necessitate restoration of soil quality to enhance ecosystem functions. Soil organic matter management: Soil organic matter is a key determinant of soil quality. The threshold or critical level of soil organic matter in the root zone of arable lands is 1.1–1.5% on weight basis. Yet, organic matter of most soils managed by extractive farming practices is as low as 0.1%. The goal of sustainable management is to enhance soil organic matter content to above the threshold level. Soil degradation processes: Decline in quality of soils under agro ecosystems is caused by a range of degradation processes. These include physical processes (e.g. decline in aggregation, crusting, compaction, and erosion), chemical processes (e.g. acidification, salinization, nutrient depletion, and elemental imbalance) and biological processes (e.g. depletion of soil organic matter, reduction in microbial biomass, and decline in soil biodiversity). Ecosystem services of soils: The term refers to economic and ecologic goods and services provided by the soil. Important among these are production of food, fiber, fuel etc.; purification of water, enhancement of bio diversity, sequestration of carbon, and moderation of climate among others. Soil management for adaptation to climate change: Judicious management of soil to restore its quality can enhance its resilience to extreme events (e.g. drought, heat wave, and inundation) and uncertain and variable climate. Adaptation is important to minimizing the risks of changing climate. Climate‐strategic agriculture: It refers to adoption of agricultural practices, which reduce the risks and avail of any new opportunities which may emerge from change in climate. Soils and global food security: Being the most basic resource, sustainable management of soils is essential to advancing global food security. Between 2005 and 2050, food production must be doubled to meet the needs of growing population and changing dietary preferences toward animal‐based over plant‐based foods.

Sustainable soil and land management which is vital for security of natural resources and food production is a complex task due to the wide range of parameters influencing soil quality and health (1,2). Various parameters, including climatic variables such as precipitation, evaporation, and, in coastal regions, sea level rise and saltwater intrusion (3), hydrogeological factors like groundwater table levels influencing evaporative fluxes (4), groundwater salinity, and soil properties as well as anthropogenic factors such as fertilization and land use, play important roles in sustainable soil management and health. In this study, we gathered diverse climatic, hydrogeological, and anthropogenic data within an intensive food production and natural preservation study area situated in North Sea adjacent northern Germany to explore the complex interplay of parameters affecting soil health and characterize the impact of these variables on sustainable soil management. The area is characterized by predominantly flat terrain with fertile soils utilized for agriculture and grazing. Additionally, it contains protected areas such as forests. Due to significant variations in land use and soil properties across the region, we categorized the area into subgroups for robust comparability. This involved dividing the region into agricultural, grassland, and forest areas, each identified by specific characteristics, such as crop production, meadow type, fertilization method, and soil nutrient holding capacity. Additional parameters including precipitation, evaporation, and leakage were factored into a groundwater recharge model for the area. Statistical analysis and machine learning algorithms were employed to assess the interrelations among these parameters affecting sustainable soil management. Recognizing these interrelations, we adapted our model to potential future scenarios and discussed how hypothetical alterations to parameters such as groundwater recharge and added fertilizer could impact land management in the study area. Our findings are applicable to areas employing similar land management practices, offering insights into the vulnerabilities and potentials of these regions in the face of a changing climate and are useful for implementing mitigation measures against land degradation and preventing the loss of fertile soil. 1. Hassani, A., Azapagic, A., Shokri, N. (2020). Predicting Long-term Dynamics of Soil Salinity and Sodicity on a Global Scale, Proc. Nat. Sci., 117(52), 33017-33027, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.20137711172. Hassani, A., Azapagic, A., Shokri, N. (2021). Global Predictions of Primary Soil Salinization Under Changing Climate in the 21st Century, Nat. , 12, 6663. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26907-33. Nevermann, H., Gomez, J.N.B., Fröhle, P., Shokri, N. (2023), Land loss implications of sea level rise along the coastline of Colombia under different climate change scenarios, Clim. Risk Manag., 39, 100470, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2022.100474. Sadeghi, M., Shokri, N., Jones, S.B. (2012). A novel analytical solution to steady-state evaporation from porous media. Water Resour. Res., 48, W09516, https://doi.org/10.1029/2012WR012

The knowledge challenge within the transition towards sustainable soil management: An analysis of agricultural advisors in England

Sustainable soil management is essential to prevent agricultural soil degradation and maintain food production and core soil‐based ecosystem services. Regenerative agriculture, one approach to sustainable soil management, is rapidly gaining traction in UK farming and policy. However, it is unclear what farmers themselves consider to be sustainable soil management practices, and how these relate to the principles of regenerative agriculture. Further, there is little insight into how sustainable soil management is currently promoted in agricultural knowledge and innovation services (AKIS). To address these knowledge gaps, we undertook the first national‐scale survey of sustainable soil management practices in the United Kingdom and complemented it with targeted interviews. We found high levels of awareness (>60%) and uptake (>30%) of most sustainable soil management practices among mixed and arable farmers. Importantly, 92% of respondents considered themselves to be practising sustainable soil management. However, our analysis shows that farmers combine practices in different ways. Not all these combinations correspond to the full set of regenerative agriculture principles of reduced soil disturbance, soil cover and crop diversity. To better understand the relationship between existing sustainable soil management practices in the United Kingdom and regenerative agriculture principles, we derive a “regenerative agriculture score” by allocating individual practices among the principles of regenerative agriculture. Farmers who self‐report that they are managing soil sustainably tend to score more highly across all five principles. We further find that sustainable soil management messaging is fragmented and that few AKIS networks have sustainable soil management as their primary concern. Overall, our study finds that there are multiple understandings of sustainable soil management among UK farmers and land managers and that they do not correspond to regenerative agriculture principles in a straightforward way. This diversity and variety in sustainable soil management needs to be taken into account in future policy and research.

Healthy soil is vital for our wellbeing and wealth. However, increasing demand for food and biomass may lead to unsustainable soil and land management practices that threaten soils. Other degradation processes such as soil sealing also endanger soil resources. Identifying and accessing the best available knowledge is crucial to address related sustainability issues and promote the needed transition towards sustainable soil and land management practices. Such knowledge has to cover all knowledge domains, system knowledge, target knowledge, and transformation knowledge. However, a comprehensive overview of existing research addressing societal needs related to soil is still missing, which hinders the identification of knowledge gaps. This study provides a detailed analysis of scientific literature to identify ongoing research activities and trends. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of scientific literature related to sustainable soil and land management was conducted. A systems-oriented analytical framework was used that combines soil and land related societal challenges with related knowledge domains. Our analysis revealed a significant increase in scientific publications and related interest in soil and land use-related research, above the average increase of publications within all scientific fields. Different forms of reduction and remediation of soil degradation processes (e.g. erosion, contamination) have been studied most extensively. Other topic areas like land take mitigation, soil biodiversity increase, increase of ecosystem services provision and climate change mitigation and adaption seem to be rather recent concerns, less investigated. We could highlight the importance of context-specific research, as different regions require different practices. For instance, boreal, tropical, karst and peatland regions were less studied. Furthermore, we found that diversifying soil management practices such as agroforestry or including livestock into arable systems are valuable options for increasing biomass, mitigating/adapting to climate change, and improving soil related ecosystem services. A recent trend towards the latter research topic indicates the transition from a soil conservation-oriented perspective to a soil service-oriented perspective, which may be better suited to integrate the social and economic dimensions of soil health improvement alongside the ecological dimension.

Soil plays a central role in most aspects of human societies, and there is a large body of literature about sustainable soil management. Nevertheless, soil is currently facing degradation arising from different threats, which undermines sustainable development globally. In order to design effective research and policy strategies, it is necessary to identify the current knowledge level about sustainable soil management. This study summarises the key findings from a systematic stocktake of available knowledge about agricultural soil management practices in 23 European countries, which included the identification of soil management practices in use, the associated impacts and the soil challenges addressed. The aim of the study was to understand the current state of knowledge about the impacts of soil management practices, investigated and/or implemented across Europe. The results were analysed at the European level and were also grouped into European Regions and Environmental Zones. Key findings from this study were the identification of knowledge gaps that are key to climate mitigation and adaptation. There is a knowledge gap about soil management practices to avoid greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils, as the few reported studies evidence the complexity of the processes governing these emissions. Further knowledge is needed on the impact of tillage practices on long‐term carbon storage and distribution along the soil profile, as the reported knowledge was not consensual about carbon storage in deeper soil layers.

To enhance student learning about impacts of soil management practices, the Sustainable Soil Management course at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver led development of a long-term, student-generated soil data set focused on the UBC Farm, a teaching, research, and community engaged production farm. The objectives of this paper are to (i) describe development of the student-generated soil data set, (ii) illustrate data interpretation done by students in the Sustainable Soil Management course, and (iii) outline key implications of having the long-term student-generated data set for sustainable soil management at a university farm. The data set, generated by students using the same sampling protocol and analytical methods since 2004, provides a long-term record of soil properties for each of the 27 fields at the UBC Farm. Students are engaged in a real-life scenario, collecting data and assessing the impacts of soil management practices on soil health. Concurrently, the data set allows the farm manager to assess the impacts of their soil management practices, and to monitor soil health. Despite various challenges such as the need for continuing funding for laboratory analyses, quick turnaround time of laboratory analyses, and ongoing maintenance of the database associated with the student-generated soil data set, having such a data set are still of enormous importance, benefiting both students and farm managers. The UBC student-generated soil data set can serve as an example for other instructors interested in involving students in long-term monitoring and data generation at university farms.

Are farmers in England equipped to meet the knowledge challenge of sustainable soil management? An analysis of farmer and advisor views

Vine growing is one of the most economically important sectors of Mediterranean agriculture, but its cultivation practices are highly detrimental to the environment and the associated biota. The application of both natural products inducing endogenous plant defense mechanisms and natural soil management systems represents a potential solution for the preservation and improvement of soil health and biodiversity. The Life Green Grapes project aimed at evaluating the effects of different natural and sustainable vine protection strategies and soil management on vineyard edaphic communities. Soil TOC, TN, C:N ratio, CaCO3 content and pH were measured. Microbial communities (bacteria and fungi) were characterized through NGS, while nematodes and microarthropods were isolated and identified. Obtained data highlighted a relationshipbetween bacteria, fungi and nematodes with soil chemistry, and an effect of the different soil management on the single and total edaphic communities. Network analysis evidenced a positive effect of the application of sustainable soil managements on the relationships among the different investigated soil trophic levels, suggesting that more natural soil managements allow a better interaction between soil organisms. In conclusion, this work confirms the importance of the application of sustainable and natural soil management practices in agricultural ecosystems, with the aim of conserving and improving soil biodiversity.

Sustainable Soil Management (SSM) practices have tended to reduce the use of fertilizer pesticides, and maximal tillage, but rely more on crop rotation, crop residues, animal manure, green manure, leguminous, appropriate mechanical control or minimal tillage to optimize soil conservation activity. The purpose of this article was to identify socio-economic characteristics of farmers regarding adoption of sustainable soil management by wheat farmers in Modares Watershed Region of Khuzestan Province, Iran. The employed research method was correlative-descriptive. Wheat farmers in this region were the target population for this study. A random sample of wheat farmers selected (N =1185, n=293). An indicator for analysis of Sustainable Soil Management (SSM) has been developed for determining level of soil sustainability of wheat farmers. According to survey results, 15.8% of respondents reported their sustainability to be unsustainable, approximately 59.2% of respondents reported their sustainability to be moderate, and remains were sustainable. According to survey results, correlation between socio-economic characteristics such as income, land size, level of mechanization, social participation, social status, crop yield, rate of loan and sustainable soil management (SSM) Index was significant. Also there was significant relationship between personal characteristics such as level of education, technical knowledge, perception of farmers and sustainable soil management (SSM) Index. Liner regression used for predict changes in level of SSM Index. Income, level of education, social participation, social status, crop yield, level of mechanization and technical knowledge of farmers may well explain for 81% changes (R 2 =0.81) in level of SSM Index.

Mapping the spatial distribution of soil fertility in a particular area gives an idea about the nutrient content in the soil which plays an im-portant role in fertilizer recommendation, sustainable soil manage-ment, integrated plant nutrient management, landuse planning, and site-specific nutrient management (SSNM). A study was carried out to assess the soil fertility status of the Rapti Municipality, Chitwan, Ne-pal. A total of 120 soil samples was collected based on land use, slope, and aspects with the useof Google Earth Pro (GEP) and ArcGIS. Based on the soil test report spatial variation of soil texture, soil pH, total nitrogen, available phosphorous, and potassium of the study area was prepared. The majority of the study area (57.11%) has sandy clay soils. The soil pH was very strongly acidic to slightly alkaline with pH values ranging from 4.8 to 8.0. Soil organic matter (1.94-3.75%), total nitrogen (0.097-0.187%), available phosphorous(51.03-270.10 kgha-1), and available potassium (169.87-358.68 kgha-1) in the soil are within the range of medium to high in the study area. To maintain this nutrient status, the use of organic manure, reduced use of chemical fertilizers, and different soil management practices should be adopted in this area.

Current soil‐ and land degradation seriously challenge our societies; it contributes to climate change, loss of biodiversity and loss of agricultural productions. Yet, soils are also seen as a major part of the solution, if maintained or restored to provide ecosystem services. Climate‐smart sustainable management of soils can provide options for soil health maintenance and restoration. In the European Union, the resource management and sustainability challenge are addressed in the Green Deal that, among other goals, aspires towards a healthy climate‐resilient agricultural sector that will produce sufficient products without damaging ecosystems and contribute to better biodiversity and mitigate climate change. The European Joint Programme (EJP) SOIL was set up to contribute to these goals by developing knowledge, tools and an integrated research community to foster climate‐smart sustainable agricultural soil management that provides a diversity of ecosystem service, such as adapting to and mitigating climate change, allowing sustainable food production, and sustaining soil biodiversity. This paper provides an overview of the potential of climate‐smart sustainable soil management research to the targets of the Green Deal that are related to soils most directly. The EJP SOIL EU‐wide consultation (interviews and questionnaires) and literature analysis (national and international reports and papers) done in the first year (2020–2021) generated a wealth of data. This data showed that there are specific manners to do research that are essential for it to be effective and efficient and that can actively contribute to the Green Deal targets. We concluded that research needs to be: (i) interdisciplinary, (ii) long‐term, (iii) multi‐scaled, from plot to landscape, (iv) evaluating trade‐offs of selected management options for ecosystem services and (v) co‐constructed with key stakeholders. Research on climate‐smart sustainable soil management should be developed (1) on plot scale when mobilizing soil processes and on landscape scale when addressing sediment and water connectivity and biodiversity management; and (2) address the enabling conditions through good governance, social acceptance and viable economic conditions.