Soil balancing is widely used in organic farming, but little is known about the practice because technical knowledge and goals for the practice are produced and negotiated within an alternative community of practice (CoP). We used a review of the private soil balancing literature and semi-structured interviews with farmers and consultants to document the knowledge, shared meanings, and goals of key actors within the soil balancing CoP. Our findings suggest this CoP is dominated by discourse between private consultants and farmers, with few contributions to or from scientists or the peer reviewed literature. The idea of soil balancing is centered around improving soil quality through adjustments in Base Cation Saturation Ratios (BCSR), and practitioners report a wide range of positive agronomic outcomes. For most soil balancers, however, BCSR is only one part of a broader approach to soil health management that also utilizes traditional soil fertility recommendations and soil health-building cultural management practices. Meanwhile, a survey of land grant university soil fertility specialists and the peer-reviewed literature documented a high degree of skepticism and a lack of scientific evidence that BCSR can boost crop yields. We conclude that this scientific discourse reflects a disconnect from the practices and meanings used in the soil balancing CoP. While tensions between the dominant and niche agricultural knowledge systems are not unique, we believe a better appreciation for the nuanced meanings and goals within the soil balancing CoP present an opening for expanded collaborations with scientists doing research on soil health.

中文翻译：

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有机农业中的土壤平衡：在替代农业实践社区中协商意义和界限

土壤平衡在有机农业中被广泛使用，但人们对该实践知之甚少，因为该实践的技术知识和目标是在替代实践社区 (CoP) 内产生和协商的。我们回顾了私人土壤平衡文献，并与农民和顾问进行了半结构化访谈，以记录土壤平衡 CoP 中关键参与者的知识、共同意义和目标。我们的研究结果表明，该 CoP 主要由私人顾问和农民之间的对话主导，几乎没有科学家或同行评审文献的贡献或贡献。土壤平衡的想法围绕通过调整碱阳离子饱和比 (BCSR) 来改善土壤质量，从业者报告了广泛的积极农艺成果。然而，对于大多数土壤平衡器来说，BCSR 只是更广泛的土壤健康管理方法的一部分，该方法还利用了传统的土壤肥力建议和土壤健康建设文化管理实践。与此同时，一项对土地授予大学土壤肥力专家的调查和同行评审的文献记录了高度怀疑和缺乏科学证据表明 BCSR 可以提高作物产量。我们得出的结论是，这种科学论述反映了与土壤平衡 CoP 中使用的实践和含义的脱节。虽然主导和利基农业知识系统之间的紧张关系并不是独一无二的，但我们相信，更好地理解土壤平衡 CoP 中细微差别的含义和目标，为与从事土壤健康研究的科学家的扩大合作提供了机会。