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Towards transdisciplinary understanding of inherited soil surveys: an exploratory case study in Zambia.

对继承土壤调查的跨学科理解：赞比亚的探索性案例研究。

基本信息

批准号：
AH/T00410X/1
负责人：
Richard Lark
金额：
$ 22.32万
依托单位：
University of Nottingham
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2019 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT00410X%2F1
关键词：
Towards transdisciplinary understanding inherited soil

项目摘要

Sustainable agriculture must preserve the soil so that it can be used agriculturally in the long term. Communities adapt their farming practices to face environmental, economic and social challenges. This process of adaptation can be supported by research, but only if we understand the soil, how its properties, potential and limitations vary in space and how communities have adapted their farming practices in the past. Soil survey has conventionally been a way to generate knowledge about the variation of the soil and how it is used. At present the development of sustainable agriculture is a challenge in many countries, particularly in the global south, not least because of climate change. Tackling these problems requires collaboration between different specialists. Whether a technical solution will succeed will always depend, at least in part, on social factors. Is an innovation compatible with practices, values and traditions of a community? Does it affect how agricultural labour is divided over time, between social groups, between adults and children and between genders? Studies of farming systems also show that these have rarely been fixed, but have changed over time, in response to different social and environmental factors. This suggests that a historical perspective on sustainable agriculture could be just as important as the perspective of the natural and social sciences in developing robust, equitable and effective solutions to contemporary problems in food security. We contend that collaborative study of the processes and products of soil survey from the colonial era (1930s in southern Sub-Saharan Africa, SSA) until the late 20th century, would provide a context in which natural scientists, social scientists and historians could develop an integrated approach to understanding sustainable agriculture. It would also address a very pressing practical problem.This problem is the scarcity of information on the soil and its variation in space over most of SSA. Collecting soil data is costly, and few people have the expertise to do it. Yet, the soil surveys produced in Africa in the past, have rarely been mobilised to address contemporary problems. We contend that these sources provide a unique window into past decisions and assumptions about the soil, whose effects are still felt today. In these soil surveys are embedded a rich set of observations and interpretations, along with hard data (soil analyses) and maps. However, old surveys cannot just be dusted off and used as if new. First, there is the technical challenge of determining whether the analyses are still reliable. Furthermore, the survey was commissioned in a particular historical context to address particular problems. Farming was done by communities with particular structures and power relations, and some perspectives will have influenced surveyors more than others. In short, the soil scientist, historian and social scientist all have a critical role in the process of appraising an inherited survey and identifying its possible strengths and weakness when used to support contemporary decisions about farming and the land. Through the proposed cross disciplinary UK-Zambia partnership, we will critically interrogate a number of inherited soil surveys created in Zambia, from the colonial period to the present, developing a theoretical framework for their appraisal. Our intention throughout is to show how triangulating perspectives from the history, social science and soil science can develop a shared evaluation of these surveys. An evaluation, furthermore, that can be applied to pressing current problems relating to soil quality in the region. To this end, we will engage with policy makers, agricultural advisors, NGOs and farmer groups to plan further funded work so that inherited soil surveys in Zambia, and elsewhere (SSA and beyond), can best be used to develop sustainable agriculture as a basis for food security into the future.

可持续农业必须保护土壤，使其能够长期用于农业。社区调整其耕作方法，以应对环境、经济和社会挑战。这种适应过程可以通过研究来支持，但前提是我们了解土壤，了解其性质、潜力和局限性在空间上的变化，以及社区过去如何调整其耕作方式。传统上，土壤调查是一种了解土壤变化及其使用方式的方法。目前，可持续农业的发展在许多国家，特别是在全球南方国家是一个挑战，这不仅仅是因为气候变化。解决这些问题需要不同专家之间的合作。一个技术解决方案能否成功，至少在一定程度上取决于社会因素。创新是否与社区的做法、价值观和传统相一致？它是否会影响农业劳动力在不同社会群体之间、成人与儿童之间以及性别之间的长期分工？对耕作制度的研究还表明，这些制度很少是固定不变的，而是随着时间的推移，根据不同的社会和环境因素而发生变化。这表明，从历史角度看待可持续农业与从自然科学和社会科学角度看待可持续农业，对于制定有力、公平和有效的办法解决当代粮食安全问题同样重要。我们认为，从殖民时代（20世纪30年代在撒哈拉以南非洲，SSA）到20世纪末的土壤调查的过程和产品的合作研究，将提供一个自然科学家，社会科学家和历史学家可以制定一个综合的方法来理解可持续农业的背景。它还将解决一个非常紧迫的实际问题，即缺乏关于大部分撒哈拉以南非洲地区土壤及其空间变化的信息。收集土壤数据的成本很高，而且很少有人有这样的专业知识。然而，过去在非洲进行的土壤调查很少被用于解决当代问题。我们认为，这些来源提供了一个独特的窗口，过去的决定和假设的土壤，其影响仍然是今天的感觉。在这些土壤调查中嵌入了丰富的观测和解释，沿着硬数据（土壤分析）和地图。然而，旧的调查不能只是掸去灰尘，像新的一样使用。首先，在确定分析是否仍然可靠方面存在技术挑战。此外，调查是在特定的历史背景下委托进行的，目的是解决特定的问题。农业是由具有特定结构和权力关系的社区完成的，有些观点对测量员的影响要大于其他观点。简而言之，土壤科学家、历史学家和社会科学家都在评估继承的调查过程中发挥着关键作用，并在用于支持当代农业和土地决策时确定其可能的优势和弱点。通过拟议的跨学科的英国-赞比亚的伙伴关系，我们将严格询问一些继承的土壤调查创建在赞比亚，从殖民时期到现在，发展其评估的理论框架。我们的目的是展示如何从历史，社会科学和土壤科学的三角视角可以开发这些调查的共同评价。此外，还可以对该地区目前与土壤质量有关的紧迫问题进行评估。为此，我们将与政策制定者、农业顾问、非政府组织和农民团体合作，规划进一步的资助工作，以便赞比亚和其他地方（撒哈拉以南非洲及其他地区）的传统土壤调查能够最好地用于发展可持续农业，作为未来粮食安全的基础。