Soil quality research has focused on intensively managed agricultural and forest soils, but the concept and importance of soil quality is also pertinent to reclaimed mine soils and other disturbed ecosystems. Adding organic amendments has been used as a means for ameliorating mine soils and improving their quality, but the long‐term effects of amendments on soil quality are not known. In 1982, a mined site was amended with seven different surface treatments: a control (nothing added), 30 cm of native soil, 112 Mg ha−1 sawdust, and municipal sewage sludge (SS) at rates of 22, 56, 112, and 224 Mg ha−1 Four replicates of each treatment were installed as a randomized complete block design. Each plot was split and planted with pitch × loblolly pine hybrid (Pinus rigida × taeda) trees and Kentucky‐31 tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.). During the 16‐yr period, organic matter content, total organic N, N mineralization potential, aggregate stability, and other physical and chemical properties were measured as mine soil quality indicators. The comparative ability of these organic amendments to positively affect organic matter content, total N, and other parameters was most apparent and pronounced after 5 yr. However, after 16 yr, soil organic matter (SOM) content and total N appeared to be equilibrating at ≈10 000 and 750 kg ha−1, respectively. Organic matter inputs by vegetation alone across the 16‐yr period in the control plots resulted in organic matter and N mineralization potential values comparable to levels in the organically‐amended plots, indicating the overriding importance of vegetation in the soil recovery process. After 16 yr, there appears to be no lasting soil quality improvements due to addition of organic amendments to this mine soil. Amendments improved short‐term production, but their cost of transport and application may be difficult to justify based on long‐term soil quality improvement.
Throughout Virginia there are a multitude of social, environmental, and economic challenges facing farmers and communities. In 2010 and 2011, an interdisciplinary team of faculty, practitioners, and graduate students collaborated to address these challenges through the creation of the Virginia Farm to Table Plan. As part of the plan, the team completed a comprehensive food system assessment. Comprehensive food system assessments use qualitative and quantitative methodologies to analyze the systematic nature of a local, state, or regional food system to address the interactions of food with social, environmental, and economic concerns. The overall purpose of this article is to present the results of an online survey of Virginia agrifood system stakeholders that investigated their priorities for strengthening Virginia's local and regional food systems. A total of 1,134 Virginia respondents completed the online survey.
This paper illustrates how farmer knowledge is generatively constructed and framed within an agroecological context to address the complexities of our food system more fully. For some, farmer knowledge is a hidden asset below the surface that acts as a reserve for sustaining and fortifying food system possibilities. We interviewed 12 self-identified smallholder farmers in Virginia using narrative inquiry as a dynamic methodology to explore the rhizomatic quality and mycorrhizal nature of smallholder farmers’ knowledge and experiences of soil, conservation, and place. The narrative inquiry method offered a participatory research approach to analyze how farmers perform their work in ways that extend across and are entangled with other domains of the food system that reflect agroecological values. Five primary themes were identified from the narrative inquiry data analysis by drawing upon the whole measures of community food systems as a values-based framework. Our findings illustrate how farmer praxis is reflective of and influenced by the ecological and sociopolitical ethos of land, food, health, and liberation. For scholar-practitioners, this research emphasizes the current claim for reevaluating and reconceptualizing research and outreach responses to mounting food system crises. The construction and expansion of farmer knowledge are not linear but rhizomatic and mycorrhizal in quality; therefore, scholar-practitioner responses to understanding and engaging with farmer knowledge systems should be amenable to a diversity of culturally dynamic systems of knowing that embody socio-eco relations and networks. Like others, we argue that an overemphasis on essentialist “best practices” and technocratic problem-solving does not adequately help us see these generative possibilities from soil to plate. Thus, we recommend that food system practitioners and researchers emphasize engaged listening, storytelling, and generative—not extractive—approaches as an epistemological frame for expanding our understanding of agroecology and food systems change.
Soil organic matter (SOM) is an important indicator of soil quality and site productivity. Organic amendments may be a means for ameliorating mine soils and other soils that have been depleted of organic matter. In 1982, a mined site was amended with seven different surface treatments: a control, 30 cm of native soil, 112 Mg ha•' sawdust, and municipal sewage sludge (SS) at rates of 22, 56, 112, and 224 Mg ha••. Four replicates of each treatment were installed as a randomized complete block design. Each replicate was subsequently split according to vegetation type: pitch x Ioblolly pine hybrid (Pinus rigida x taeda) trees and Kentucky-31 tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.). Soil analyses of composite samples indicated that organic amendments initially improved C and N status of the mine soils, but after 16 years their levels converged to that of the control treatment. Tree volume and biomass were used as indices of the effects of organic matter content 16 years after initial amendment. Individual tree volumes of the sawdust and 22, 56, 112 Mg ha•• SS treatments retained 18 to 26% more volume than the control. Overall, forage production was the same among treatments. Organic amendments improved initial soil fertility for crop establishment, but it appears that they will have little or no long-lasting effect on plant productivity.
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