Discussing SoilCare dissemination pathways

At the recent SoilCare annual meeting, Jane Mills and Jasmine Black of the project dissemination team were interviewed by Prof. Mark Reed (WP3 leader) for his Fast Track Impact podcast. They talked about different paths of dissemination – including social media, videos and the potential for artist collaborations. Pan-European projects create a great opportunity for different cultures to work together and Jasmine reflected on the variety of ways in which each country best disseminates the story and results of the SICS trials to farmers, in order to spread the information as widely as possible. Jane talked through her paper on the successes of social media and how some countries prefer to use Facebook over Twitter. To delve into this topic further, they wrote a 2-part blog series with Nick Lewis of CCRI here.

A key point from this was on the need to develop a story throughout the project in order to reach a wide audience once the final results are released. Jasmine discussed doing this through encouraging researchers to share preliminary results, which are clearly stated as such and don’t necessarily need to include hard figures or statements. She is currently working with SoilCare researchers to do just this (see blogs from Spanish and Belgium SICS). Jasmine also considered in a second blog the impact of the project after it has finished and how the results might be better used by amalgamating them with similar projects (e.g. SmartSOIL, RECARE) and using key networks identified in other projects (such as SURE-Farm) to most effectively distribute them to farmers in varying cultures.

Fourth SoilCare Newsletter Published

The fourth SoilCare newsletter has now been published and can be downloaded HERE. This issue covers a range of topics, including:

1. New Report: Review of Soil Advice
2. News from the field: Progress in the Spanish SICS trials in organic olive orchards and stone fruit plantations
3. News from the field: Progress on the woodchip trials in Belgium
4. SICS Focus: Organic matter decline
5. New SoilCare Film
6. New SoilCare booklet for farmers
7. New SoilCare publications
8. Past and Future events/presentations

Two New SoilCare Publications: Soil information sharing and knowledge building

29th April 2019 - The SoilCare team from the University of Gloucestershire in UK has recently published two papers in a Special Issue of Soil Use and Management - Soil information sharing and knowledge building for sustainable soil use and management: insights and implications for the 21st Century which brings together a number of insights from Australia, USA and Europe about the generation, exchange and use of information and knowledge building for sustainable soil use and management, predominately in agriculture.  The first paper, Are advisory services “fit for purpose” to support sustainable soil management? An assessment of advice in Europe, examines the extent to which advisory services are able to address current and emerging knowledge needs of practitioners (primarily farmers) about sustainable soil managementin Europe. The second paper,  The use of Twitter for knowledge exchange on sustainable soil management, illustrates, through a content analysis of the SoilCare Twitter account and in-depth qualitative interviews with farmers, the extent and type of farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing on Twitter in relation to sustainable soil management practices.

Ingram, J.A. and Mills, J., 2018. Are advisory services ‘fit for purpose’ to support sustainable soil management? An assessment of advice in Europe. Soil Use and Management, 35(1), pp. 21-31. doi: 10.1111/sum.12452

Mills, J., Reed, M., Skaalsveen, K. and Ingram, J., 2018. The use of Twitter for sustainable soil management knowledge exchange. Soil Use and Management, 35 (1), pp. 195-203. doi.org/10.1111/sum.12485

For more information about these papers, please contact either Julie Ingram This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Jane Mills This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.