Soil is the world's most vital component for food and fiber production: preservation of this critical natural resource is paramount for protecting the environment, and ensuring that current and future populations are healthy and well-fed. In many countries of the world, including the United States, soils are being degraded at an alarming rate by wind and water erosion, desertification, and salinization resulting from misuse and improper farming practices. Often the topsoil is lost at a rate that far exceeds the capacity of natural processes to regenerate it. With soil degradation, there is a concomitant decline in soil quality, i.e., the soil's capacity to produce healthy and nutritious crops, resist erosion, and reduce the impact of environmental stresses on plants. Many decades of research have consistently shown that the best means of improving and restoring soil quality and productivity is by proper and regular additions of organic materials mainly through the use of crop rotations, cover crops, crop residues, animal manures, composts, and reduced tillage.

The publicly sponsored agricultural research system in the United States has always had to deal with the tension between public expectations and scientific practices and standards. The equilibrium it established between those two contradictory demands has been unraveling since the 1960s. The contemporary challenge to the system is to redefine its public and scientific roles in an environment of rapid scientific change and of public debate and disunity.

A case study in eastern Virginia provides evidence that both environmental and farm profit goals may be satisfied by alternative nitrogen (N) management strategies for grain production. We used a linear programming framework with an N mass balance model to calculate returns from several options for providing N to crops. Replacing single applications of inorganic N fertilizer with split applications or with additions of organic N were found to reduce the potential for N loss from cropland and to increase net returns. For some N management strategiesy however, adoption may require financial and educational assistance. As a result, water quality policies may benefit by including such incentives.

Different chemical, physical, and biological properties of a soil interact in complex ways that determine its potential fitness or capacity to produce healthy and nutritious crops. The integration of these properties andine resulting level of productivity often is referred to as “soil quality.” Soil quality can be defined as an inherent attribute of a soil that is inferred from its specific characteristics and observations (e.g., compactability, erodibility, and fertility). The term also refers to the soil's structural integrity, which imparts resistance to erosion, and to the loss of plant nutrients and organic matter. Soil quality often is related to soil degradation, which can be defined as the time rate of change in soil quality.

Soil quality should not be limited to soil productivity, but should encompass environmental quality, human and animal health, and food safety and quality. There is inadequate reliable information on how changes in soil quality directly affect food quality, or indirectly affect human and animal health. In characterizing soil quality, biological properties have received less emphasis than chemical and physical properties, because their effects are difficult to measure, predict, or quantify. Improved soil quality often is indicated by increased infiltration, aeration, macropores, aggregate size, aggregate stability, and soil organic matter, and by decreased bulk density, soil resistance, erosion, and nutrient runoff. These are useful, but future research should seek to identify and quantify reliable and meaningful biological/ecological indicators of soil quality, such as total species diversity or genetic diversity of beneficial soil microorganisms, insects, and animals.

Because these biological/ecological indexes of soil quality are dynamic, they will require effective monitoring and assessment programs to develop appropriate databases for research and technology transfer. We need to know how such indexes are affected by management inputs, whether they can serve as early warning indicators of soil degradation, and how they relate to the sustainability of agricultural systems.

Interaction between farmers and researchers has benefits for both groups. Researchers gain an understanding of farmers' needs and the production system into which new techniques must fit; farmers are helped in adopting new techniques, and get insights into why some techniques are more successful than others. However, communication between farmers and researchers usually has been just from the university to the farmer. The recovery of information from farmers, integration of techniques into whole production systems, and the research priorities of farmers have not been very important to researchers.

An exception has been in sustainable agriculture, where some researchers have been asking farmers what they are doing and what they want the university to do, and spending time observing existing practices before they design research trials. Ideally, farmers and researchers interact as equals, sharing information and expertise. We present examples from California and New York that show that this approach is highly effective, and recommend policie s to expand on this approach in researchfunding, training of research and extension personnel, and the dissemination ofinformation. We also discuss practical ways to carry out those policies, drawn from the experiences of both university and private non-profit organizations.

Reviews of historical and organizational literature provide the backdrop for a general discussion of citizen input into land-grant universities and for a specific case study: the Citizens Advisory/Oversight Council of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This strong citizens' council, established in 1989, took its form in response to institutionally structured fears among university personnel, on one hand, and farmers and citizen groups on the other. Each group's recognition that the other's concerns were legitimate led to an acceptable resolution. We describe the principal characteristics of the resulting successful CIAS Council that is composed of farmers and representatives of the state's environmental community. Such councils facilitate new approaches to integrating the craft and science of farming, and for linking the production side of agricultural systems with policy issues.

In arid areas of western Rajasthan, major constraints responsible for low plant production include low and erratic rainfall, high evaporation, and low soil fertility, particularly with respect to organic carbon and nitrogen. These problems lead to acute shortages of grain, fodder and fuelwood. Sustainable crop and biomass production can be achieved through adoption of agroforestry, silvipastoral and agrihorticultural systems. Integrated nutrient and moisture management practices can help in controlling pathogens and in improving the soil environment for higher sustained production.

Many farmers view with skepticism the dominant agricultural research and extension education model, in which new knowledge on f arming practices is developed by researchers and delivered through extension programs. The participatory research and education model is designed to support a shared vision of research and education as a learning process among partners working in community. The participatory model is offered as a way to achieve better communication and enhanced cooperation among farmers, researchers and extension educators.

Our knowledge of soil is based primarily on quantitative analysis of isolated physical, chemical, and biological properties. However, the interaction of these quantitative aspects determines soil quality. Integrative tools are needed by researchers, farmers, regulators, and others to evaluate changes in soil quality from human activity at a local and global level. An index needs to be adaptable to local or regional conditions. For example, the parameters needed to determine changes in soil quality may differ between a semi-arid wheat field and a rice paddy. Suitable reference points and optimum ranges are needed for soil quality attributes. The present challenge is to integrate a suite of soiltests into a meaningful index that correlates with productivity, environmental, and health goals.

We analyzed two sets of farm policy options, representing different ideological approaches to government involvement in agriculture, to estimate their effects on the relative economic attractiveness of “sustainable” and “conventional” farming systems. The mandatory supply control approach, through strict acreage limitations on program crops, represents a strong government role in commodity supply management. The Normal Crop Acreage approach, on the other hand, allows farmers greater flexibility in deciding what crops to grow. We used economic models of five pairs of case study farms in different agroclimatic areas of South Dakota, covering corn-soybean, spring wheat, and winter wheat growing regions. Mandatory restrictions on the planted acreage of “program” crops, including soybeans, were found to favor the conventional systems, because they induced high prices for crops that predominate in conventional systems, especially com, soybeans, and wheat. In principle, however, mandatory acreage controls could require compliance with certain sustainable agriculture practices. Normal Crop Acreage (NCA) proposals can encourage greater use of sustainable farming systems. Where conventional corn and soybean production is relatively profitable, as in parts of eastern South Dakota, NCA options by themselves appear insufficient to induce changeovers to sustainable cropping systems. In wheat growing areas of northern and western South Dakota, however, where the two systems oflen are about equally profitable, NCA policies could promote sustainable systems, particularly if deficiency payments are not reduced for harvesting legumes and other non-program crops on NCA base. To have this positive effect, NCA policies must be introduced gradually and structured to limit adverse effects on the markets for legumes and other non-program crops that are important in sustainable rotations.