The presentation examined the potential gap between research and practice in the context of soil carbon management It was presented in the workshop ‘Soil management: facilitating on-farm mitigation and adaptation’ at the International Farming Systems Association IFSA Conference Berlin 1-4 April 2014. http://project2.zalf.de/IFSA_2014/calls/call-for-abstracts/theme-3/workshop-3.1

1. Management practices to enhance soil carbon:
using stakeholder consultation to evaluate
credibility, salience and legitimacy of information
Julie Ingram & Jane Mills, CCRI
jingram@glos.ac.uk

2. The 11th European IFSA Symposium, Berlin 1-4 April
2014
Workshop 3.1
Soil management: facilitating on-farm mitigation and
adaptation
Conveners: Julie Ingram, Ana Frelih-Larsen, Jan Verhagen

3. Outline
• Significance of soil carbon
• Management effects on soil carbon & yield
• Science-practice gap – complexity
• Science-practice gap – boundaries
• Science-practice gap - credibility, salience legitimacy
• SmartSOIL project approach, methods
• Results
• Conclusions

4. Significance of soil carbon
Soil productivity
Soil health
Resilience
Ecosystem services
Mitigation

5. Significance of soil carbon
• Impetus for policy makers and scientists to identify
agronomic and soil management practices that can
increase carbon stocks and optimise carbon use (flows)
• This is the aim of SmartSOIL

6. Complex interactions – management
effects on soil carbon & crop growth
Biological Chemical Physical
Carbon
stocks
Carbon
flows
Management
Health Nutrients Water
Crop
growth
Soil
type
Crop
yield
Soil Properties
Soil Functions
Carbon
storage
Crop
yield
Management

7. Science-practice gap - complexity
• Complexity of soil carbon dynamics
• Lack of consensus within the scientific community
• Uncertainty - efficacy of different management practices
to enhance soil carbon & yield across different soil types,
scales & climatic conditions
• Problematic to provide evidence of the positive effects of
management practices
• Heterogeneity of soil & farming systems
• Science inaccessible to the lay person (modelling,
language)
• Context of climate change debates
• Challenges in communication and implementation –
science- practice gap

8. 8
there is a ‘prevalence of different norms and
expectations in the two communities [experts and
decision makers] regarding such crucial concepts as
what constitutes reliable evidence, convincing argument,
procedural fairness, and appropriate characterization of
uncertainty’
Cash et al. (2003, p8086)
Science- action gap - concept of boundaries

9. 9
Scientific information – likely to be more effective if
perceived by stakeholders to be not only credible but also
salient and legitimate
Credible information - perceived by the users to be
accurate, valid, and of high quality
Salience -how relevant information is to the needs of the
decision maker
Legitimacy -perception that the production of information
and technology has been respectful of stakeholders’
divergent values and beliefs
Science- action gap – credibility, salience legitimacy

10. Context - SmartSOIL project
Two overall aims:
• To identify farming systems and agronomic practices that
result in an optimised balance between crop productivity
and soil carbon sequestration.
• To develop and deliver a decision support tool (DST) and
guidelines to support novel approaches to different
European soils and categories of beneficiaries (farmers,
farm advisory and extension services, and policy makers).

11. 11
Linking soil carbon &
crop productivity
Soil
management
systems in
Europe
DST & Guidelines
Economic appraisal
of soil management
options
Improving
knowledge
LTEs & new
experiments
Stakeholder
involvement &
dissemination
Applying
knowledge
Case studies
Project approach

12. Case study regions
12

13. 13
Farmers know their practices well. Even if you put
lots of effort in to convincing them that a certain
practice will be good in the long term, I think this
will be fairly ineffective. You have to break down
barriers between research and day-to-day practice
of farmers.
Adviser, Spain
Results: Science- practice gap

14. Legitimacy
Different
views, values,
access
Salience
Not seen as
relevant to
farm business
Credibility
Perceived lack
of scientific
credibility
Even if the scientific community
come to a consensus on best
practice, it is likely that the practices
defined will be so far removed from
current practice that they won’t
implement it. Adviser Spain
One of the problems is that there is
so much uncertainly about C at the
simplest level. It would be helpful
to have consensus in scientific
community first of all
Researcher UK
Results
A German or an Austrian farmer
has more access to this kind of
information
Adviser Hungary

15. Results: Credibility
Even “experts” [advisers] don’t know which practice to
recommend to farmers when they ask how can I conserve
the quality of soil and mitigate climate change. The
communication to the farmers is not necessarily the issue,
more important, agree and display some clarity on “best
practice. Adviser, Spain
At the advising level it is crucial to have a proof, an
evidence of the effects of a practice. Adviser, Italy
It is essential to simplify the information [scientific
outputs]- in order to communicate a complex message to
local situations. Adviser, Denmark

16. • Little relevance
• Farmers not convinced of cost effectiveness
• No demonstrable commercial incentive- economic
benefits should be prioritised
• Short term production-related decisions not
compatible with long term carbon management -
needs to be relevant to the farmers’ timescale
• Soil carbon not in farmers’/advisers’ vocabulary
• Farmers don’t deal with single issues
Results: Salience

17. Results: Legitimacy
• Stakeholder engagement reveals diverse nature of
potential beneficiaries of the project outputs and the
contexts they operate in
– Different values, concerns, and perspectives
– Different access to: PCs, broadband, access to advisers,
– Different- age education, farming systems
– Different contexts
• Develop a range of support formats to suit different
users’ needs and preferences
• Continue (widen?) consultation

18. Legitimacy
Wider
consultation
Salience
Reduced
relevance
Credibility
Tainted if
too many
SH
increased legitimacy
-negative effects on wider salience
re-frames the issue in a way that is
irrelevant to some stakeholders ‘Credibility is hard to establish
in arenas in which considerable
uncertainty and scientific
disagreement exists, either about
facts or causal relationships’.
Cash et al. (2002, p4)
simplifying scientific inputs -
compromises the credibility and
usefulness of outputs
increased legitimacy - decreases
credibility -science can be seen as
being ‘tainted’ if too many SH bias
the process e.g. soil tillage
Interaction –credibility, salience, legitimacy

19. Conclusions
• Soil carbon significant to policy makers and scientists but
not to farming community
• Science- practice gap exists
• Credibility, salience and legitimacy - boundary features
• Need to balance interactions
© 2014 Julie Ingram. The Authors asserts their moral right to be identified as the Author of the work

20. 20
• Cash D. W. et al. (2003) Knowledge systems for
sustainable development. PNAS 100 (14), 8086–8091
• Ingram et al. (2013) Uptake of soil management
practices and experiences with decisions support tools:
Analysis of the consultation with the farming
community. Deliverable 5.1 www.smartsoil.eu
• Ingram et al. (in press) Managing Soil Organic Carbon: a
Farm Perspective. Eurochoices
References

21. Thank you
Countryside & Community Research Institute,
University of Gloucestershire, UK