Benefits and Challenges for soil

management at different scales and levels

SEMINAR, 16 December 2015

The Importance of the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural

Greenhouse Gases

Nico Polman, LEI-Wageningen UR, The Hague

Content

Sustainable soil management

Implications at different scales and levels

Benefits and challenges

● Keeping track of our soils

● Future conservation practices

Content

Added value/ha

Time

(Krijn Poppe, 2015)

Urban farming/ hobby

Family farm

Agricultural family firm

Subsistence farm

AgriFood networks

Agricultural policy

Effects of soil management (example):

The percentage of agricultural land affected by erosion

Human activity and agricultural practices are the main drivers for soil erosion trends

Effects: onsite (soil productivity) and offsite (e.g. erosion stimulates erosion adjactant fields)

(Panagos et al, 2015)

Soil management and scale issues

Policies have many unforeseen impacts on (agro) ecosystems at different levels of spatial and temporal scales (climate change)

Policymaking: one of the unresolved problems is the step from scale issues to (economic) governance

Appropriate for a lower level like a region or location

Might be undesirable at a

global scale or vice versa

Scaling of soil management

Veldkamp et al., 2011

Scales

Aspects of governance:

Spatial Jurisdictional SES NIE

Globe Globe (inter

governmental)

Informal (e.g. ; and covenants).

Focus on long term effects;

Greenhouse effect

Food prices.

Agricultural land

prices.

EU (inter-

governmental)

Formal governance. Focus on

long term and member state

interactions

Erosion upstream leads to

floods

Subsidizing

specific land use,

e.g. agri-

environmental

schemes

Country Formal governance. Erosion is

not a property of the agricultural

product.

Erosion upstream leads to

sedimentation

downstream.

Regulation of

land use, e.g.

zoning policies

Province Formal provincial governance.

cross level dynamics, dependent

on country

Indicators and

mechanisms

Region

No formal governance, space can

be cross provincial

Erosion, sedimentation

and landslides.

Regional price

ratio’s

Landscape Spatial interactions Erosion stimulates

erosion on adjacent fields

Municipalities Formal local governance; more

municipalities are possible within

one landscape

Local zoning

policies, norms

and values

Field Farmer’s focus on short

individual benefits. In case of

contract farming the chain

governance determines the anti-

erosion measures at field level

Aggregation of plant soil

interaction leading to

erosion patterns. Erosion

reducing measures

Land-use choices

(crops, tillage),

farm profits.

Land prices drop

Point Depending on higher levels Interaction plant and soil,

Universal soil loss

equation

Not existent

Sustainable soil management

● Maintaining functionality of the soil for food and other biomass production whilst preserving or improving soil functions and minimising soil-mediated environmental impacts

● Economic, social and environmental aspects of soil management

● A perspective on soil management that transcends the individual farm

Social Environmental

Economic

Synergy between farm and broader

societal level

Societal Level

(off-site)

Farm Level

(on-site)

Cropping system, nutrient management and tillage

Biodiversity, storage and buffering, and biomass production (ecosystem services)

Adaptation Adaptation

Soils providing ecosystem services

Capital in farming:

(1) Physical (machinery, buildings, etc.); (2) financial; (3) human (knowledge, skills); (4) social (participation, networks); and (5) Natural capital (soils)

Natural capital = stock (long term)

Ecosystem services = flow

To isolate the natural capital element within the production of goods

Maps show the regional differences in the production of provisioning services (soil type).

Not in the maps: supply of ecosystem services is not constant in time (e.g. weather) and there is often a distance between demand and supply.

Trade-off between production of different ecosystem services:

● Food production versus water conditions

● Joint-production

● Sustainable flows

● Natural and socio-economic shocks

Ecosystem services: food provision

Co-creation of innovative strategies

Interactions between farmers, researchers / technology providers, neighbours, civil servants and representatives of NGOs are needed (adaptive approach)

Actors concerned with soil management have different interests and objectives with respect to soil functions

In achieving these objectives, actors within the same region are dependent upon each other as there are trade-offs in the effects of practices (costs and benefits), causing a tension between different soil functions

Maintaining natural soil quality (capital) for food production receives growing interest in economics.

Increasing vulnerability to organic matter, soil fertility, compaction, weeds and pathogens as a result of soil management (e.g. cropping system, nutrient management and tillage) will reduce the value of land

Natural capital: value can be seen as value to investors or value to society?

The type of accounting depends on the user of the data (to be acceptable for and recognized by stakeholders (users of data)

Accounting natural capital

Future conservation Practices

Can’t make it rain any more often and at the optimum time to have best yield

Will increase the ability of the soil to capture more water, reduce the evaporation rate from the soil surface, and increase water availability to the crop

Over the long-term will increase the capacity of the soil to store more water and make water available to the plant

Will increase the overall resiliency of the cropping system to withstand climate stresses (variable precipitation and temperature extremes)

(Olson, 2014)