Soil as Social‐Ecological Feedback: Examining the “Ethic” of Soil Stewardship among Corn Belt Farmers

Abstract

In this article we examine in‐depth interviews with farmers (n = 159) from nine Corn Belt states. Using a grounded theory approach, we identified a “soil stewardship ethic,” which exemplifies how farmers are talking about building the long‐term sustainability of their farm operation in light of more variable and extreme weather events. Findings suggest that farmers' shifting relationship with their soil resources may act as a kind of social‐ecological feedback that enables farmers to implement adaptive strategies (e.g., no‐till farming, cover crops) that build resilience in the face of increasingly variable and extreme weather, in contrast to emphasizing short‐term adjustments to production that may lead to greater vulnerability over time. The development of a soil stewardship ethic may help farmers to resolve the problem of an apparent trade‐off between short‐term productivist goals and long‐term conservation goals and in doing so may point toward an emergent aspect of a conservationist identity. Focusing on the message of managing soil health to mitigate weather‐related risks and preserving soil resources for future generations may provide a pragmatic solution for helping farmers to reorient farm production practices, which would have soil building and soil saving at their center.

An accelerating treadmill and an overlooked contradiction in industrial agriculture: Climate change and nitrogen fertilizer

“…Future research in this area would also benefit from exploring the group of farmers this study gave little attention to: those using conservation practices to reduce their N's vulnerability to climate change. Though political‐economic context may constrain farmers, some farmers can act within these circumstances to achieve environmental ends and short‐term profit imperatives, as Roesch‐McNally et al () also find in their study of soil conservation‐focused adaptation efforts. Following examples like Roesch‐McNally et al (), future research on agricultural adaptation should build on our analysis here by giving more empirical and theoretical attention to the interactive role of structural conditions and individual agency.…”

“…This finding aligns well with prior work that has revealed how even farmers who intend to undertake conservation practices can be contradicted by their short‐term productivity goals (Roesch‐McNally et al, ). It also engages with the prior literature emphasizing that adaptive decision‐making among Midwestern farmers is shaped to a great degree by system‐level path dependencies (Roesch‐McNally, Arbuckle, & Tyndall, ), where many farmers are “locked in” to the production‐oriented practices and thinking of capitalist agriculture (Dentzman & Jussaume, ). Although this prior research primarily highlights the barriers this system puts in place to conservation adaptation practices, we reveal how it also pushes farmers to use practices that reduce vulnerability to climate change but ultimately accelerates the rate at which agricultural production contributes to climate change and thus expands its contradictory nature by further undermining the environmental conditions upon which the system depends to function.…”

Cropping pattern changes diminish agroecosystem services in North and South Dakota, USA

“…Despite recent declines in area under federal conservation programs (Figure 9b), recent research suggests that many farmers are aware of the consequences of cropping pattern decisions and view themselves as stewards of the land (Ranjan et al, 2019;Roesch-McNally, Arbuckle, & Tyndall, 2018). These producers may be willing to implement some of these conservation strategies.…”

Community-Engaged Research Builds a Nature-Culture of Hope on North American Great Plains Rangelands

“…Natural resource scholars increasingly recognize that complex links between humans and our environment preclude separate conceptualizations of "Nature" and "Culture" in the modernist sense (Latour 2012;Glaser et al 2008). They have joined geographers and anthropologists in rejecting human-nature dualisms, seeking instead new tools to interrogate social reality and create opportunities to conserve multispecies thriving in an interconnected world (Huntsinger and Oviedo 2014;Roesch-McNally et al 2018;Glaser et al 2008, andHruska et al 2017). For example, the natureculture concept (Fuentes and Wolfe 2002;Haraway 2003;and Malone and Ovenden 2016) creates space for novel examinations of relationships between and among species and their environments.…”

“…In rangeland management, interspecies relations extend to the consideration of an entire agro-ecosystem, spanning various groups of managers, domestic livestock and managed wildlife populations, vegetation, and soil communities, and prevailing weather and climatic conditions, all at multiple spatio-temporal scales. Experience, emotion, and moral reasoning shape the culture of these multispecies relations, as they help individuals and social groups navigate biophysical processes and the decision-making of non-human agents (Plumwood 2006;Roesch-McNally et al 2018;Ellis 2013;and Nightingale 2011). Given the need to interpret human-ecosystem relations as they relate to goals, we employ two key concepts to inform geographic and emotional specificity in the discussion of rangeland nature-cultures: A sense of place and hope.…”