| This research is one small component in the long history of catalysts to advance sustainable agricultural research and its application. A main focus of the research discusses soil knowledge among farmers, a subject not often formally examined by physical or social scientists within the North American context. Wisconsin farmers possess a warehouse of practical knowledge about soils that this study attempts to help inventory and evaluate. This project's significant analytical contribution is its provision of empirically-derived ideas about this understanding from the farmer perspective. The project's assessment of farmer soil knowledge is not limited to the soil surface, and includes examination of the three-dimensional nature of the whole soil profile. Although not the primary goal of the project, variation in the soil landscape as well as in socioeconomic attributes of the farm and farmer are analyzed for preliminary clues to reasons for variation in degree of soil knowledge.; Educational components to foster improvement in the soil and water environment of Midwestern agriculture should be grounded within what farmers currently understand about their soils. Based upon empirical findings from real human and landscape settings, the study gives recommendations for action to improve farmer understanding of soil. The soil knowledge findings and the assessment of current variation of management inputs provide baseline comparative data and also give direction to the coming diffusion of site-specific farming technologies.; The study's major methodological contribution is that it attempts to refine past efforts by integrating highly-crafted questions pertaining to soil knowledge and management with site-specific and detailed information about the soil resource base. The research steps out of disciplinary constraints to examine both the people and their place. A large number of farmers participated, making generalizations of known statistical reliability possible to the state level. Also important is the demonstration of the utility of the land-use oriented USDA National Resources Inventory (NRI) framework as a novel tool to connect farmer behavior with soil resource. This addresses a goal of the NRCS, that the NRI's usefulness should expand beyond inventory-based assessment and into other analyses related to soil and water conservation. |
