Sustainable soil management: Soil knowledge use and gaps in Europe

Abstract

Soils are the foundation of agricultural production, ecosystem functioning and human well‐being. Bridging soil knowledge gaps and improving the knowledge system is crucial to meet the growing EU soil policy ambitions in the face of climate change and the ongoing trend in soil degradation. The objective of this article is to assess the current state of knowledge, knowledge use and knowledge gaps concerning sustainable soil management in Europe. This study is based on interviews with 791 stakeholders and 254 researchers and on a comprehensive review of >1800 documents carried out under the European Joint Programme on agricultural soils. Despite differences in stakeholder groups, the conclusions are rather consistent and complementary. We identified major knowledge gaps with respect to (1) soil carbon stocks, (2) soil degradation and fertility and (3) strategies for improved soil management. Transcending these three areas, particularly the loss of soil organic carbon, peatland degradation and soil compaction, are most critical, thus, we stress the urgency of developing more models and monitoring programmes on soils. Stakeholders further report that insufficient transfer of existing soil research findings to practitioners is a hindrance to the adoption of sustainable soil management practices. In addition to knowledge production, soil knowledge gaps may be addressed by considering seven recommendations from the stakeholders: (1) raising awareness, (2) strengthening knowledge brokers, (3) improving relevance of research activities and resource allocation for land users, (4) peer‐to‐peer communication, (5) targeting advice and information, (6) improving knowledge access, and (7) providing incentives. We argue that filling and bridging knowledge gaps should be a priority for policymakers and the insights provided in the article may help prioritise research and dissemination needs enabling a transition to more sustainable soil management in Europe.

Towards enhanced adoption of soil‐improving management practices in Europe

“…Some experts mentioned that the integration of the farmer and farm advisor community with the soil research community could be improved to address existing knowledge gaps. This observation aligns with the results of a survey that consulted more than 300 soilrelated stakeholders from across Europe (Thorsøe et al, 2023;Vanino et al, 2023). Contrastingly, Strauss et al (2023) found that lack of knowledge was a less relevant barrier to adopt sustainable soil management practices in Germany.…”

“…The reported impacts of soil management practices (Supplementary Information II) allowed three key observations to be made: First, a greater number of soil management practices were reported to tackle the more widespread soil challenges (i.e., enhancing nutrient use efficiency and retention, reducing soil erosion, enhancing soil structure, enhancing SOC content, and enhancing water storage capacity) compared to more regional soil challenges. The regional soil challenges were: avoiding soil acidification and salinization, avoiding peat degradation, and avoiding soil sealing (see Thorsøe et al (2023) and JRC (2015) for the distribution of soil challenges across Europe). Second, the three soil challenges of reducing N 2 O and CH 4 emissions from soils, reducing soil contamination, and enhancing soil biodiversity were reported to be tackled by relatively few practices (less than 21% of the practices where the impacts were assessed), and many knowledge gaps on impact of soil…”

“…All other practices had either low or heterogeneous adoption levels, implying room for increased adoption and indicating region-specific limitations. The adoption patterns of some practices could be explained by the occurrence of the soil challenges (JRC, 2015;Thorsøe et al, 2023) that they address. For example, water management practices that avoid or reduce soil salinization were applied in the South of Europe where the warmer and drier climate favour salinization, whereas liming was applied towards higher latitudes where the wetter climate favours soil acidification.…”

“…Concerning cover cropping, possible innovations that may increase the adoption rates could be the undersowing of cover crops into established main crops to advance the date of cover crop germination (especially relevant in northern Europe; Arlauskienė & Šar unaitė, 2023), the usage of site-adapted cover crop varieties and mixtures with higher climatic tolerance (Meyer et al, 2020), or where feasible, cover crop irrigation (Smit et al, 2019). Innovation to foster the development and adoption of soil management practices may arise from improving the science-practice interface (Thorsøe et al, 2023), for example, through the proposed network of agroecosystem living labs across Europe (McPhee et al, 2021).…”

Do we speak one language on the way to sustainable soil management in Europe? A terminology check via an EU‐wide survey

“…To reach the aims of programmes such as the EJP SOIL, it is nevertheless fundamental to ensure that all involved stakeholders-from researchers to endusers, practitioners and decision makers-understand the terminology used and can sufficiently disentangle a common meaning based upon the source of the terminology. Consequently, there is a need for a more effective communication, requiring a harmonization of different approaches, a common language with clear definitions (Carmen et al, 2018) and a better understanding of knowledge gaps in sustainable soil management (Thorsøe et al, 2023).…”