Farmers’ knowledge and use of soil fauna in agriculture: a worldwide review

Soil fertility assessment and management from the perspective of farmers in four villages of eastern South Africa

“…Unfortunately, only a few studies have investigated site-specific soil information and soil fertility perceptions of South African smallholder farmers (Buthelezi et al, 2013;Buthelezi-Dube, Hughes, & Muchaonyerwa, 2018;Manyevere, Muchaonyerwa, Laker, & Mnkeni, 2014;Nethononda & Odhiambo, 2011). Intergenerational sharing of knowledge is becoming less frequent shared in many regions (Pauli, Abbott, Negrete-Yankelevich, & Andres, 2016) mainly due to education and increased emigration to urban areas. Documentation and understanding of local soil perceptions will complement scientific information to provide comprehensive and relevant solutions to local problems.…”

Ecological illiteracy can deepen farmers’ pesticide dependency

“…This is aligned with techno-centric concepts of pest control (Morse and Buhler 1997), in which farmers lack a basic understanding and integrated perspective of herbivores as elements within a functioning ecosystem and are thus inclined to pursue curative measures for their mitigation, usually in the form of synthetic pesticides. Ecological literacy is particularly weak for small organisms such as mites, while knowledge of other crop antagonists, such as diseases, or soil fauna and nitrogen-fixing organisms may be even more limited (Pauli et al 2016). In rice ecosystems, herbivores make up 17% of the arthropod community and 1% of them are pests (as compared to 64% for natural enemies; Settle et al 1996), yet the bulk of farmers' actions are aimed at the prevention or control of the latter, instead of at conserving the more abundant beneficial organisms that naturally restrict pest proliferation.…”

Response to Pauli, N., L. K. Abbott, S. Negrete-Yankelevich, and P. Andrés. 2016. Farmers’ knowledge and use of soil fauna in agriculture: a worldwide review

“…For those researchers who voiced their reluctance, it was based on the difficulty of interpreting http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss4/art31/ This research problem was further compounded by the inherent difficulty in studying soil biota, inadequate experimental design, and lack of long-term commitment to fund such research. The research capacity deficiencies highlighted in the 1997 paper have continued to this day, and are further stymied by the loss of experiential knowledge of farmers, which as Pauli et al (2016) point out has been "rarely deliberately or deeply consulted." The same can be said of farmers' soil testing practice, which if we understood more about it could be harnessed for closer monitoring of soil condition and early detection of soil health problems such as soil acidification or nutrient loss.…”

“…Despite recurrent language, in policy and other documents, suggesting farmers' monitoring of soil health is necessary to guide decision making and land management practices, in an examination of two decades of national-level statistics from Australia and United States we found that the reality of farmers' practice was difficult to establish (Lobry de Bruyn and Andrews 2016). It appears that we have assumed what motivates farmers to test soil but have not asked them, as Pauli et al (2016) also noted with farmers' knowledge and use of soil fauna in agriculture.…”

“…In my work (Lobry de Bruyn and Abbey 2003), it was critical to take an approach when interviewing farmers that we were not "testing" their knowledge of soil fauna but documenting their understanding, and how that influenced their practice (praxis). Pauli et al (2016) did not provide a rationale for the examples they chose to use in their paper, with the specific methodology and findings of many of the case study papers not fully critiqued. This paper could have also examined the techniques used to gain farmers' knowledge of soil fauna and examine the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches.…”