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While it is recognized that farming alternatively is inherently knowledge intensive, in the United States, farmer knowledge has been widely overlooked and under-documented within the scientific literature. Farmer knowledge of soil in particular is understudied in the US, especially given that healthy soils have been identified as the basis for resilient agriculture. Applying an exploratory, case study approach, we interviewed 13 organic farmers based in Yolo County, California to understand how organic farmers in this region acquire knowledge about their soils, to document what organic farmers in this region know about their soils, and to share key management practices organic farmers use to build soil health in the region. We found the organic farmers in this study acquire knowledge about their farming systems primarily through direct observation, personal experience, experimentation, and inherited wisdom. To evaluate soil health, farmers in this study cited using a range of indicators, including soil structure, crop health, growth habits of weeds, and soil biology. We found that these organic farmers possess extensive place-based knowledge of their local farming systems, and that this knowledge base represents an important source for innovation and adaptive management in scientific and policy-making contexts.

Debates about modern beef production suffer from a major historical blind spot. For over a century, the feedlot relied on a closed nutrient loop to sustain soil fertility in the United States Corn Belt. Driven by industrial capitalist urbanization, a cattle-grain-beef complex shaped land use, tenure systems, management practices and environmental politics on the expanding frontier, sacrificing the tall-grass prairies and fracturing agrarian resistance to corporate concentration and the Union Stock Yards. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) emerged after 1950, breaking the nutrient cycle of the original feedlot and turning the relationship between ranching and agriculture into a dysfunctional one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few scientific experiments have influenced more land than one conducted in the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon by the US Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry and US Forest Service in 1907–1909. Four square miles of land were enclosed with a “coyote-proof fence,” guarded by a hunter, and stocked with an untended band of sheep. Data were collected on vegetation and sheep performance inside and outside the fence, and two years later success was declared. By 1910, the Forest Service had wrested range research from the Bureau of Plant Industry, subordinating the emerging field to timber production and fire suppression for decades to come. The young scientist who conducted the experiment, James Jardine, was promoted to Inspector of Grazing for the fledgling Forest Service, while his Wallowa collaborator, Arthur Sampson, went on to become “the father” of range science. The model of range management that they pioneered was applied across the US West and, later, on many rangelands in the developing world. Fencing and predator control are now generally viewed as unrelated management practices, but in the Forest Service model they were intimately connected. A critical physical geography of the Wallowa experiment reveals that the institutional context in which it occurred was more important than the findings themselves, and that although the results appeared to be scientifically rigorous and ecological, the methods were weak and the real criteria for “success” were economic. The high costs of fencing could be justified only if they were offset by a reduction in labor costs for herders. But without herders to guard the livestock, predators would have to be eliminated. Enormous public subsidies were required to implement the model, which continues to affect rangelands around the world.

While it is recognized that farming alternatively is inherently knowledge intensive, in the United States, farmer knowledge has been widely overlooked and under-documented within the scientific literature. Farmer knowledge of soil in particular is understudied in the US, especially given that healthy soils have been identified as the basis for resilient agriculture. Applying an exploratory, case study approach, we interviewed 13 organic farmers based in Yolo County, California to understand how organic farmers in this region acquire knowledge about their soils, to document what organic farmers in this region know about their soils, and to share key management practices organic farmers use to build soil health in the region. We found the organic farmers in this study acquire knowledge about their farming systems primarily through direct observation, personal experience, experimentation, and inherited wisdom. To evaluate soil health, farmers in this study cited using a range of indicators, including soil structure, crop health, growth habits of weeds, and soil biology. We found that these organic farmers possess extensive place-based knowledge of their local farming systems, and that this knowledge base represents an important source for innovation and adaptive management in scientific and policy-making contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific interest in carbon sequestration on rangelands is largely driven by their extent, while the interest of ranchers in the United States centers on opportunities to enhance revenue streams. Rangelands cover approximately 30% of the earth's ice-free land surface and hold an equivalent amount of the world's terrestrial carbon. Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, and savannas and cover 312 million hectares in the United States. On the arid and semi-arid sites typical of rangelands annual fluxes are small and unpredictable over time and space, varying primarily with precipitation, but also with soils and vegetation. There is broad scientific consensus that non-equilibrium ecological models better explain the dynamics of such rangelands than equilibrium models, yet current and proposed carbon sequestration policies and associated grazing management recommendations in the United States often do not incorporate this developing scientific understanding of rangeland dynamics. Carbon uptake on arid and semi-arid rangelands is most often controlled by abiotic factors not easily changed by management of grazing or vegetation. Additionality may be impossible to achieve consistently through management on rangelands near the more xeric end of a rangeland climatic gradient. This point is illustrated by a preliminary examination of efforts to develop voluntary cap and trade markets for carbon credits in the United States, and options including payment for ecosystem services or avoided conversion, and carbon taxation. A preliminary analysis focusing on cap and trade and payment for avoided conversion or ecosystem services illustrates the misalignment between policies targeting vegetation management for enhanced carbon uptake and non-equilibrium carbon dynamics on arid United States rangelands. It is possible that current proposed carbon policy as exemplified by carbon credit exchange or offsets will result in a net increase in emissions, as well as investment in failed management. Rather than focusing on annual fluxes, policy and management initiatives should seek long-term protection of rangelands and rangeland soils to conserve carbon, and a broader range of environmental and social benefits.