Integrating farmers’ and experts’ perspectives for soil health-informed decision-making in conservation agriculture systems

Akhtar Veisi, Korous Khoshbakht, Hadi Veisi (), Reza Mirzaei Talarposhti and Reza Haghparast Tanha
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Akhtar Veisi: Shahid Beheshti University
Korous Khoshbakht: Shahid Beheshti University
Hadi Veisi: Pensylvania State University
Reza Mirzaei Talarposhti: Shahid Beheshti University
Reza Haghparast Tanha: Dryland Agricultural Research Institute (DARI)

Environment Systems and Decisions, 2024, vol. 44, issue 2, 199-214

Abstract: Abstract Soil health and conservation agriculture are two pivotal components of soil security that link agricultural and soil science to policy by integrating stakeholders, scales, functions, and assessment tools, going beyond crop production or other human profits (e.g., human health). The study employed the Analytical Hierarchy Process to integrate the perspectives of two key stakeholders, namely farmers and experts, in order to identify soil health indicators that could guide the selection of conservation tillage systems. The primary objective was to determine the priority assigned to different soil health indicators by these stakeholders. The results showed that farmers prioritized and assigned a higher weight to soil mineral nitrogen, soil organic carbon, and soil water content to enhance the soil health by means of the conservation tillage systems. Conversely, agricultural experts assigned the highest weight to soil organic carbon, soil water content, soil respiration, and soil microbial biomass when choosing the proper tillage systems to improve soil health. Further, the results indicated that farmers and agricultural experts prefer no-tillage and reduced tillage systems to enhance soil health. More so, farmers and experts together indicated that these criteria accounted for 59% of the selection of no-tillage, 34% for reduced tillage, and 19% for conventional tillage systems. The results showed the usefulness of our work as an analysis framework to inform policy makers for supporting No-Tillage crop management programs and other agroecological engineering practices. Our findings could be broadly used to offer insights into crafting soil health policy and soil security for transitions toward sustainable and healthy ecosystem.

Keywords: Conservation agriculture; Tillage; Analytical hierarchy process; Soil health; Drylands (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10669-023-09923-0

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