Soil health and community well‐being: A framework of intangible outcomes of sustainable agriculture

Social outcomes of agricultural practice adoption are often excluded from adoption studies, particularly outcomes related to community well-being. In large part, this is because assessing the social well-being outcomes of sustainable agricultural practices lacks a widely accepted framework. This study fills the gap by identifying community well-being domains and attributes related to the impacts of agricultural management. Semi-structured interviews via Zoom with 42 underrepresented producers across the United States during the winter of 2021 captured producers' perceived broader community well-being outcomes of soil health management. Producers were selected to represent Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network sites and interests, a national network of diverse cropping, livestock, and integrated agricultural research sites. Two rounds of coding, first inductive and then deductive, were based on the community well-being framework and the 4Cs of ecosystem assessment: conditions, capabilities, connections, and crosscutting. The data revealed three major domains of how soil health management contributes to the conditions, capabilities, and connections that underlie community well-being, aligning with the 4Cs framework. Within these three domains, we identify 16 attributes specific to agricultural management, including sense of place, recreation and tourism, and community safety, among others. These domains and associated attributes notably expand the range of measurable outcomes of soil health practice adoption. The new data contribute to the development of social sustainability indicators and efforts to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion within agricultural innovation. Additionally, this research provides an empirical, theoretically based framework of social sustainability indicators for agricultural sustainability assessments across the LTAR network.