Purpose of workshop
Facilitators and farmers develop a shared, foundational understanding of soil health and factors affecting it.
Plan ahead
Soils for practicals: Ask farmers to bring composite soil sample of their worst (for example,most striga infested fields) and best soils
Workshop venue: Plan the session to take place somewhere where you can find a good set of contrasting soils (very fertile, very infertile) to use for the macrofaunal and POM demos.
Be prepared with all of the materials for the demos: Develop a checklist of materials needed for the different practicals If you want things to go smoothly. Use it to ensure you have everything in hand.
Workshop process
Anchor the learning to what farmers already know
Start by finding out what farmers already know about healthy and unhealthy soils, as well as any management practices that they think are related to these. This is a conversation where farmers should do most of the talking, though do ask probing questions to clarify and broaden the discussion.
Start the conversations with the following open questions:
- How do you recognize a good soil from a bad soil? What are all the characteristics that you use to tell the difference?
- What causes soils to become degraded and non-productive?
- Once a soil has become degraded/non-productive, what can be done to restore it to productive condition?
Make sure you encourage farmers to explain their meaning if they say something that is not obvious. For example, we once heard farmers refer to a degraded soil as a “soil that passes water.” When asked to explain, they said they were referring to soils that are not able to retain water, which runs right off them.
Please write down what farmers say. We’ll want to analyze this across organizations. It may give us additional insights on the state of farmers’ local soils knowledge.
Add new information
Most of the characteristics that farmers will mention as being associated with good versus bad soils will be related to the organic matter content (amount of carbon present in the soil). They will mention things like soil color, vigor of crops growing in a soil, ease of cultivation, water holding capacity, etc. Explain that all the characteristics they are talking about are largely related to the functions associated with the amounts of carbon in the soil.
Healthy soils have high carbon levels. They are dark in color, easy to cultivate, grow vigorous crops and are more able to resist periods of drought. Unhealthy soils have low carbon levels and do not function well. They are easily compacted and are poor in terms of provision of nutrients to crops and infiltration and retention of water. They often have high levels of soilborne pests and diseases, which further weaken the crops.
Do the practicals for POM, allowing farmers to analyze their own soils.
Do the macrofanual assessment on the soils you pre-identified at the workshop site.
Connect the two concepts to the soil food web.
Make the following two points :
- All living things are made up of carbon that is captured from the atmosphere by plants during photosynthesis. Carbon forms the basic structure of all living things. Animals, including people, get their carbon by eating plants and/or other animals that got their carbon from plants. This is how carbon moves through life on earth.
- Carbon gets into the soil primarily through plants and animal residues. Seeds release carbon into the soil when they germinate. Plant roots pump carbon into the soil as they grow. When plants and animals die, the carbon in their bodies are recycled by soil microorganisms and tiny animals. The residues are the main carbon inputs to soil.
Show the carbon video
End the session by discussing possible ways of increasing soil carbon content. (See the list of soil health principles and practices under the Resources for Workshops tab.)