Towards climate-smart sustainable management of agricultural soils in Flanders: Part II: EJP SOIL survey on current research knowledge and stakeholder views on knowledge needs, barriers and opportunities for the knowledge system

EJP SOIL unites a broad European research consortium to enhance the contribution of agricultural soils to key societal challenges such as climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainable agricultural production, ecosystem services provision, prevention and restoration of land and soil degradation and biodiversity maintenance. One of the objectives is to develop and deploy a roadmap for climate-smart sustainable agricultural soil management research. From this roadmap activities for the EJP SOIL work packages are defined and research topics for project calls selected. In order to develop this roadmap, in 2020 - the first year of EJP SOIL -, a number of inventories and stock take activities have been conducted, involving local stakeholders. This report, together with ILVO mededeling 271 (Ruysschaert and Jacob, 2021), summarizes the input provided for Flanders. In order to collect the information from a broad range of stakeholders including researchers, policy advisors and the farming sector, three questionnaires were developed, i.e. one focused on policy (see ILVO mededeling 271), one on practice and one on research. Nineteen organisations have contributed to one or more questionnaires. The results of both the ‘research’ and ‘practice’ questionnaires are part of this report. The ‘research’ questionnaire aimed to inventory (recent) research results and insights on the mapping, monitoring, modelling and prevalence of soil challenges, soil management and research gaps. The inputs of the consulted research stakeholders on the various topics, were supplemented with a literature search. The ‘practice’ questionnaire aimed to identify knowledge use and knowledge needs on sustainable soil management in Flanders from a practitioner’s point of view and to identify barriers and opportunities for the knowledge system needed to foster sustainable soil management. In all three questionnaires, stakeholders were asked to prioritize soil challenges in Flanders for the upcoming decades. Maintaining/increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) was by far the most important soil challenge according to the stakeholders, followed by enhancing water storage capacity, enhancing soil biodiversity and enhancing soil nutrient retention/use efficiency. SOC is a well-studied soil challenge, but actual monitoring is lacking and research for soil management practices increasing SOC focused so far mainly on the addition of organic fertilisers/amendments and non-inversion tillage and less on the effect and potential of crops, cover crops, crop rotations and the impact of the water table. There are still many questions, including interactions with other soil challenges and how incentive schemes and associated monitoring and verification methods could be developed. Although water storage was the second priority for the stakeholders due to recent and projected drought spells, this topic was underrepresented in soil research until now. Stakeholders pointed out that an integrative soil vision is lacking in Flanders which is an overarching critical element for the knowledge system. Stakeholders also ask for a more structural multi-stakeholder soil network with clear roles and interactions between research, policy, advisory services and farmers. In addition, stakeholders pointed to the need of a centralized soil knowledge platform.