Sustainable agricultural soil management in Austria: tasks, knowledge needs, challenges and barriers

The survey comprised four sections. The initial section requested background information from the participants, including their stakeholder designation and a self-assessment of their knowledge of agricultural soils in Austria and their home region. The second section of the survey addressed the current level of knowledge regarding sustainable soil management. Participants were asked to identify and rank the three most significant soil challenges, evaluate the tasks and actions required to enhance overall soil knowledge, determine which soil challenges require improved knowledge and indicate how the current situation has changed in the last 5 years. The third section addressed barriers to the advancement, availability and transfer of knowledge. Participants were requested to indicate the significance of removing various barriers concerning the three main soil challenges they have previously selected. The fourth section provided the opportunity to provide further comments, remarks or reflections regarding the knowledge of sustainable soil management or knowledge requirements in Austria. The questions were elaborated within the project team of the EJP Soil, which comprises scientists from several countries in the EU. The full survey template is available upon request from the authors; the wording of the questions can also be found in the figures (translated from German).

The questionnaire was set up online using the survey tool ‘soSci’ (www.soscisurvey.de; Leiner 2019). An invitation link was distributed to the mailing lists of the Austrian Soil Forum (bodenforum.at; n = 300) and registered participants of a workshop on carbon farming (n = 228). The survey was online from 18 February to 15 March 2024 and could be completed without the need to register or provide personal information. The language used was German.

The participants were asked to rate the questions on a scale of 1 (disagree/not important) to 5 (highly agree/very important), with 3 representing a neutral position. In addition, participants were given the option to select ‘I don't know’. The level of agreement or disagreement was calculated as the percentage of participants who rated a question above or below 3, respectively. The arithmetic mean of all ratings (mean score) was used as an additional proxy for (dis-)agreement (for further details, see also Weninger et al., 2024). To ensure the representativeness of this visualisation approach, the results were examined for any irregularities, such as bimodality. A total of 12 stakeholder categories were available for selection. However, limited sample sizes prevented a detailed breakdown for the majority of categories. To enable us to make statements about stakeholder differences, we grouped related categories. These were ‘Science’ (comprising the categories ‘Researchers’ and ‘Laboratories’) and ‘Agriculture’ (comprising ‘Farmers’, ‘Advisors’, ‘Farmers organisations’ and ‘Agro-industry’). Here, we not only primarily present the overall results, but also discuss differences between the subgroups ‘Science’ and ‘Agriculture’.

Python 3.9.12 embedded in the Spyder 5.2.2 environment was used for figure generation (matplotlib), statistics and data handling (pandas, numpy).

Fortunately, we were able to get a strong response from the agricultural sector, including practising farmers (Fig. 1). This stakeholder group is of paramount importance, as they are the primary implementers of sustainable agricultural practices. However, this group is notoriously difficult to reach and to encourage to take part in scientific endeavours, which often results in their underrepresentation in studies (e.g. Veenstra et al., 2024; Weninger et al., 2024). The underlying reasons may include the perception that the questions asked in scientific surveys are too abstract or not easily understandable, and that the overall topics are overly complex and often not directly relevant to the everyday lives of farmers. The completion of surveys may be further hampered by different ways of entitling and formulating challenges between stakeholder groups or by lengthy questionnaires including complex scientific formulations, which can be exhausting for non-scientists unfamiliar with scientific language (Witzling et al., 2021; Wade et al. 2021). The practical relevance of the topic and of the questions for farmers and other non-scientists, as well as the brevity of the survey are presumed to have benefited our study.

All presented tasks to improve soil knowledge were considered important, as were the knowledge needs for soil challenges, both with only a very small percentage of negative ratings (Fig. 3). This may be interpreted as a request for scientists to intensify their research efforts and adopt a more proactive approach to the tasks listed. However, these also include tasks that are beyond the typical research process, such as increasing the availability of research to other stakeholders or enhancing the coordination between all parties involved in knowledge production. It is, therefore, not feasible to continue with the status quo. Instead, new approaches must be developed to facilitate the transfer and exchange of knowledge effectively (Reincke et al., 2020). Key actions include increasing the participation and earlier involvement of non-scientists, especially farmers, in the research process, potentially even at the conceptual phase.

Furthermore, it is important to communicate findings through means that are established and trusted by the relevant stakeholder group. These are unlikely to be scientific papers, but rather newspapers, practitioner journals or social media (Rust et al., 2022). Farmers, in particular, tend to obtain their knowledge from trusted peers, such as other farmers or local agricultural advisors (Wood et al., 2014; Schweinzer et al., 2019; Alexopoulos et al., 2021). Reaching this group of stakeholders would, therefore, require an entirely new approach and dissemination strategy by researchers (Reed et al., 2014; Cvitanovic et al., 2016; Mason et al., 2023). While ‘Producing new knowledge on the prevalence of key soil challenges’ was the only task with a mean score below 4 for the ‘Science’ subgroup, the ‘Farmers’ stakeholder group also assigned low scores for tasks related to research infrastructure and data collection and monitoring. Taken together, this suggests that stakeholders, particularly those from the agricultural sector, think that science should focus on research that has practical relevance for practitioners, and that better dissemination of existing knowledge is needed, rather than more in-depth, high-resolution analyses (Hoffmann et al., 2007).

However, the knowledge needs for virtually all the soil challenges presented were considered important by all stakeholder groups. An exception is ‘Avoid salinization’, which received a relatively high proportion of neutral and negative ratings. This is probably due to the fact that Austria has a low prevalence of saline soils, and that anthropogenic causes of salinisation, usually related to water logging or irrigation without proper drainage, are less of an issue (Stavi et al., 2021). ‘Avoid soil sealing’ was the highest rated soil challenge across all stakeholder groups, especially in the ‘Science’ subgroup with a mean score of 4.9 (Fig. 4). Soil sealing is caused by the overbuilding of land with roads, buildings and other infrastructure and, as such, is well defined and straightforward (Scalenghe and Marsan 2009). However, it is currently a hot topic in Austria, both socially and politically (Aust et al., 2020; WWF 2023). Pronounced disparities between the subgroups were found for ‘Avoid N₂O/CH₄ emissions’ and ‘Avoid peat degradation’, which were rated at least 0.6 points lower by the ‘Agriculture’ subgroup. It is not entirely clear what is driving this perception, although of the 10 soil challenges listed, these two were the ones where the current dimension, as well as the negative consequences for farmers' day-to-day business are the least tangible or even deliberately induced (e.g. conversion of peat and wetlands for arable land). Accordingly, these are issues where agriculture is in the focus of criticism (Tan et al., 2022; Fluet-Chouinard et al., 2023; Girkin et al., 2023). This, in turn, may have led to a certain weariness and disregard for the issues, which may have overshadowed the rating of the actual importance of these two knowledge needs.

Soil sealing was also most frequently rated among the three most important challenges for sustainable soil management, followed by erosion and maintaining/increasing soil organic carbon (SOC). However, within the three selected challenges, soil sealing was often ranked in third place. For the ‘Science’ subgroup, increasing SOC would be the most important challenge, ahead of avoiding erosion and soil sealing. Increasing biodiversity and creating an optimal soil structure also often received the highest scores from scientists. For the ‘Agriculture’ subgroup, avoiding soil erosion would be by far the most important challenge, followed by soil sealing, creating optimal soil structure and increasing SOC.

Considering all challenges, there was a tendency for those with a direct impact on soil fertility and productivity to be considered more important by stakeholders in the agricultural sector, while scientists also recognised the importance of environmental issues. There are many reasons for this discrepancy, but it is clear that a farmer's first priority is to produce food and other agricultural commodities rather than biodiversity, especially as most farms are under substantial economic pressure (Brennan et al., 2022; Khatri et al., 2023). However, farmers are not a homogeneous group and their attitudes towards sustainable agriculture are individual and shaped by factors such as age, education, personality, farm size or their social network (Serebrennikov et al., 2020). If ecology is to play a more important role in agriculture, more awareness, education and incentives are needed (Ahnström et al., 2009; Barnes et al., 2022). Overall, the ecosystem services provided by soils are becoming more widely recognised, not only by stakeholders but also by the general public. An important step towards recognising the vital role of soil for society is being taken by the EU through the development implementation of agri-environmental strategies, such as the EU Soil Thematic Strategy on Soil or the Biodiversity Strategy (Montanarella and Panagos 2021).

Despite this, almost all barriers were considered to be important hindrances to the challenges in question. However, there were some interesting patterns and exceptions. A lack of relevant technology and, to a lesser extent, also a lack of capacity were not seen as important barriers to preventing soil sealing, but rather inadequate policies and legislation. The same applies to peat degradation. The importance of developing and implementing comprehensive and effective soil protection laws and directives has been highlighted by many authors, but they are still lacking both at national (Minixhofer et al., 2019; Jandl et al., 2024) and EU level (Peake and Robb 2021; Heuser 2022). Notwithstanding the recent developments regarding policies and legislation, this shortcoming was acknowledged by all stakeholder groups in the survey. Quite generally, a lack of technology or capacity and, to a lesser extent, the underdeveloped soil network were rated as less significant barriers than a lack of communication, financial resources and particularly inadequate policies and laws. This further reinforces the notion that it is more crucial to disseminate and implement existing knowledge than to develop new techniques or practices (see also Peake and Robb 2021; Evans et al., 2022). The overarching perspective illustrates that all soil challenges are intertwined with a multitude of barriers that require collective action from all stakeholders to overcome them (Jordan et al., 2021).

Given the generally high rating of the importance of tasks, knowledge needs and removal of barriers, it is not surprising that the perceived changes in framework conditions for more sustainable soil management over the last 5 years were not overly optimistic. There were, however, some notable differences between the stakeholder groups. The ‘Science’ subgroup identified some improvements in the areas of soil monitoring and coordination of knowledge production, which were not perceived as such by the other stakeholder groups. The ‘Science’ subgroup also acknowledged that soil policies have been strengthened on a European level (with a mean score of 3.6), although this has not been the case at the national scale (mean score of 2.9; Fig. 6). On the European level, all other stakeholder groups provided substantially lower scores. This may be explained by the more pronounced scepticism towards the EU among the general public, especially within the rural population (Karner 2013; Matthews 2024). This perception is influenced by a degree of one-sided media coverage, which tends to focus on the EU's missteps rather than its achievements (de Vreese 2007; Bijsmans 2021; Praprotnik and Perlot 2023). Furthermore, an increasing number of individuals are relying on social networks for information, which also contain a considerable volume of biased or misleading postings (Fortunato and Pecoraro 2022; Rust et al., 2022). It could thus be argued that scientists and other stakeholders with a closer insight into the EU, for example, those involved in EU programmes or working in a related field of research, should make greater efforts to communicate positive developments to the public. The ‘Agriculture’ subgroup was more pessimistic overall and also had a higher percentage of complete disagreement (score 1) with the presented statements about changes during the last 5 years, although all mean scores were around the neutral value of 3 (Fig. 6). One notable exception was the statement ‘Economic support for practitioners to adopt sustainable soil management has improved’, which saw high rates of disagreement and a markedly lower mean score (2.4). While the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices may offer financial benefits to farmers, they can also result in lower yields, increased labour demands, and a substitution of routines, machinery and equipment, which may lead to economic losses (van der Ploeg et al., 2019). It is, therefore, evident that farmers and farm-related stakeholders require greater financial assistance to facilitate this transition (Piñeiro et al., 2020; Hessel et al., 2022).

The survey participants were invited to provide individual comments in the section labelled ‘Other reflections’. The results of this survey were corroborated by several topics that were mentioned multiple times in different wordings, which also provided more in-depth insights. A common theme was that there is already a large amount of scientific knowledge available, but it is often processed and presented in ways that are not farmer-friendly. There is also a need for more user-oriented dissemination strategies. To achieve this, social and communication sciences should be involved as well as all soil network players, especially agricultural schools and advisors (agricultural chambers). Many participants perceived a low willingness to cease soil sealing and soil destruction, which they believe is due to a lack of political initiatives or even a deliberate blockage in the general political process. In terms of financial resources, many comments stated that programmes for subsidies and incentives need to be practically feasible. It was also suggested that greater effort should be invested in balancing the different aspects of ecology, economy and practical application when formulating such programmes. Furthermore, the establishment of a coordination centre for soil monitoring was proposed and some concerns were raised regarding soil fertility, carbon accumulation, or carbon farming and certification schemes.