Scientific and local classification and management of soils

Shankarappa Talawar and Robert Rhoades

Agriculture and Human Values, 1998, vol. 15, issue 1, 3-14

Abstract: A critical comparative analysis of howfarmers and scientists classify and manage soilsreveals fundamental differences as well assimilarities. In the past, the study of local soilknowledge has been predominantly targeted atdocumenting how farmers classified their soils incontrast to understanding how such classificatoryknowledge was made use of in actually managing soilsfor sustaining production. Often, classificatorydesigns – being cognitive and linguistic in nature –do not reflect the day-to-day actions in farming.Instead of merely describing local soil classificationin relation to scientific criteria, understanding howdifferent types of ethnolinguistic soil categories arerelated to crops, climate, subsistence needs,fertility, market demand, and cultural norms of thesociety would be far more effective in focusingresearch and development efforts. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

Keywords: Local soil knowledge; Local soil classification; Local soil management; Scientific soil classification; Technical soil classification; Agricultural adaptation; Soil fertility; Soil-plant relationship; Local land use types (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1007497521205 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:15:y:1998:i:1:p:3-14

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10460

DOI: 10.1023/A:1007497521205

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture and Human Values is currently edited by Harvey S. James Jr.

More articles in Agriculture and Human Values from Springer, The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().