DOI: 10.15482/usda.adc/29656808
title: Stakeholder Engagement with Soil Testing: Practices and perspectives in U.S. agriculture

description: The Fertilizer Recommendation Support Tool (FRST; https://soiltestfrst.org/) project and Agricultural Laboratory Testing Association (ALTA) conducted a survey of stakeholder use of soil-test-based information for phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) management. Other surveys have explored farmers’ soil testing practices and nutrient management attitudes, but our survey was novel because it included consultants, agronomists, and public-sector professionals in the respondent pool and included K as a nutrient of interest. The survey’s objectives were to: 1) understand how stakeholders perceive and use soil test data as a component of P and K fertilization decision making, 2) assess the factors that influence laboratory selection for routine soil analysis, 3) evaluate the drivers behind P and K recommendations and fertilization decisions, and 4) identify the information that stakeholders value for making P and K fertilization decisions to support the adoption of science-based fertilizer-P and -K recommendations. This survey was a component of the project entitled “Modernizing Fertilizer Recommendations: The Fertilizer Recommendation Support Tool (FRST)” and funded by the Natural Resources Conservation Service Conservation Innovation Grant (NRCS-CIG) led by the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.The survey data include responses to 23 main questions pertaining to demographics, soil testing goals, the fertilizer decision-making process, fertilizer recommendation philosophy, and potential use of FRST, and nine optional questions about soil sampling and fertilization practices. Survey questions were either multiple-choice, multiple-selection, or rating scales. No information revealing the personal identity of the respondents was collected. The complete list of questions is provided as a separate worksheet in the Excel data, and a copy of the survey questionnaire is included for download to show the full set of questions and answers the respondents had to choose from. Some of the survey questions on soil sampling practices complement the information collected by the survey performed by Spargo et al. (2022) and published by Lyons et al. (2023).The survey was conducted in 2024 using Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo) and was shared via a social media platform (X, formerly Twitter), distributed to over 100 FRST project collaborators, and shared via email with Certified Crop Advisors (CCAs) through the American Society of Agronomy. Data from all 296 respondents were exported from Qualtrics into a Microsoft Excel CSV file. The dataset is provided in two formats: standard form with descriptive responses and numerical form, where the numbers correspond to those shown in the Qualtrics survey PDF.These data support a manuscript that has been submitted to the Agronomy Journal for peer review and publication. Two data columns were added to the dataset for the express purposes of identifying i) whether the respondent data were used in the manuscript (Column F, where TRUE = respondent data used in manuscript), ii) identifying the occupational group used in the manuscript (Column K), and iii) identifying the Region to which each respondent’s data were assigned (Column P). Once the manuscript is published, this data publication will be updated to include a link to the publication.<br><b>Acknowledgements</b>Thanks to our funding sources: USDA-NRCS (grants 69-3A75-17-45 & NR233A750011G016), USDA-ARS (grant 58-8070-8-016), and agInnovation (State Agricultural Experiment Stations) via Hatch Funds provided by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture for the National Research Support Project 11 (NRSP11). We are especially appreciative of the stakeholders who completed the survey and contributed to this body of knowledge.<br><b>References</b>​Lyons, S. E., Clark, J. D., Osmond, D. L., Parvej, M. R., Pearce, A. W., Slaton, N. A., & Spargo, J. T. (2023). Current status of US soil test phosphorus and potassium recommendations and analytical methods. <i>Soil Science Society of America Journal</i>, <i>87</i>(4), 985–998. https://doi.org/10.1002/saj2.20536Spargo, J., Lyons, S., Clark, J., Osmond, D., Parvej, R., Pearce, A., Slaton, N., Saffire, D., Alford, S., Allen, T., Arnall, B., Buob, T., Camberato, J., Cardon, G., Culman, S., Davenport, J., Fernandez, F., Florence, R., Flynn, R., . . . Zhang, H. (2022). A survey to evaluate the current status of land grant university and state department of agriculture soil fertility recommendations and analytical methods [Data set]. Ag Data Commons. https://doi.org/10.15482/USDA.ADC/1526506