[MCN] Farms: Grow food, build up soil carbon too

[Lance Olsen]

Journal of Rural Studies    Volume 48, December 2016, Pages 115-128

Communicating soil carbon science to farmers: 
Incorporating credibility, salience and legitimacy
Julie Ingram, Jane Mills, Camilla Dibari et al

Abstract
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016716304922

A key narrative within climate change science is 
that conserving and improving soil carbon through 
agricultural practices can contribute to 
agricultural productivity and is a promising 
option for mitigating carbon loss through 
sequestration. This paper examines the potential 
disconnect between science and practice in the 
context of communicating information about soil 
carbon management. It focuses on the information 
producing process and on stakeholder (adviser, 
farmer representative, policy maker etc) 
assessment of the attributes credibility, 
salience and legitimacy. In doing this it draws 
on results from consultations with stakeholders 
in the SmartSOIL project which aimed to provide 
decision support guidelines about practices that 
optimise carbon mitigation and crop productivity. 
An iterative methodology, used to engage 
stakeholders in developing, testing and 
validating a range of decision support guidelines 
in six case study regions across Europe, is 
described. This process enhanced legitimacy and 
revealed the importance, and the different 
dimensions, of stakeholder views on credibility 
and salience. The results also highlight the 
complexities and contested nature of managing 
soil carbon. Some insights are gained into how to 
achieve more effective communication about soil 
carbon management, including the need to provide 
opportunities in projects and research programmes 
for dialogue to engender better understanding 
between science and practice.

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  =-------------------------------------------------------------===----------------------------------------------------------------=
"In the early 1990s a number of long-running 
trends were apparently cresting Š. Tommy 
Mullaney, eleven, of Crownsville, Maryland, 
returned home from camp in the summer of 1990 to 
find his name inscribed on a MasterCard complete 
with a $5,000 credit line.  ' I jumped up and 
down and said Wow - the hologram was cool,' 
Tommy told the Washington Post. 'But it sure made 
me wonder who was running that bank'."

James Grant. Pp. 436-437, "Afterword: End of the 
Line," Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending 
in America from the Civil War to Micheal Milken.

=-------------------------------------------------------------===-----------------------------------------------------------------=
"Full of recent references and statistics, 
Harvesting the Biosphere adds to the growing 
chorus of warnings about the current trajectory 
of human activity on a finite planet, of which 
climate change is only one dimension.

"One can quibble with some assumptions or tweak 
Smil's calculations, but the bottom line will not 
change, only the time it may take humanity to 
reach a crisis point."

Stephen Running. "Approaching the Limits" Science 15 March 2013.
Book review. Harvesting the Biosphere: What we 
have taken from Nature. by Vaclav Smil .  MIT 
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 315 pp. $29, £19.95. 
ISBN 9780262018562
-- 
  =-------------------------------------------------------------===----------------------------------------------------------------=
"In the early 1990s a number of long-running 
trends were apparently cresting Š. Tommy 
Mullaney, eleven, of Crownsville, Maryland, 
returned home from camp in the summer of 1990 to 
find his name inscribed on a MasterCard complete 
with a $5,000 credit line.  ' I jumped up and 
down and said Wow - the hologram was cool,' 
Tommy told the Washington Post. 'But it sure made 
me wonder who was running that bank'."

James Grant. Pp. 436-437, "Afterword: End of the 
Line," Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending 
in America from the Civil War to Micheal Milken.

=-------------------------------------------------------------===-----------------------------------------------------------------=
"Full of recent references and statistics, 
Harvesting the Biosphere adds to the growing 
chorus of warnings about the current trajectory 
of human activity on a finite planet, of which 
climate change is only one dimension.

"One can quibble with some assumptions or tweak 
Smil's calculations, but the bottom line will not 
change, only the time it may take humanity to 
reach a crisis point."

Stephen Running. "Approaching the Limits" Science 15 March 2013.
Book review. Harvesting the Biosphere: What we 
have taken from Nature. by Vaclav Smil .  MIT 
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 315 pp. $29, £19.95. 
ISBN 9780262018562

-- 
  =-------------------------------------------------------------===----------------------------------------------------------------=
"In the early 1990s a number of long-running 
trends were apparently cresting Š. Tommy 
Mullaney, eleven, of Crownsville, Maryland, 
returned home from camp in the summer of 1990 to 
find his name inscribed on a MasterCard complete 
with a $5,000 credit line.  ' I jumped up and 
down and said Wow - the hologram was cool,' 
Tommy told the Washington Post. 'But it sure made 
me wonder who was running that bank'."

James Grant. Pp. 436-437, "Afterword: End of the 
Line," Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending 
in America from the Civil War to Micheal Milken.

=-------------------------------------------------------------===-----------------------------------------------------------------=
"Full of recent references and statistics, 
Harvesting the Biosphere adds to the growing 
chorus of warnings about the current trajectory 
of human activity on a finite planet, of which 
climate change is only one dimension.

"One can quibble with some assumptions or tweak 
Smil's calculations, but the bottom line will not 
change, only the time it may take humanity to 
reach a crisis point."

Stephen Running. "Approaching the Limits" Science 15 March 2013.
Book review. Harvesting the Biosphere: What we 
have taken from Nature. by Vaclav Smil .  MIT 
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 315 pp. $29, £19.95. 
ISBN 9780262018562









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