Biological soil amendments

CSA’s inter­ven­tion under the Min­PAD – SPADe RISE pro­ject is groun­ded in a core prin­ciple : rege­ne­ra­tive agri­cul­ture ser­vices must respond to far­mers’ real prio­ri­ties and constraints, rather than intro­duce pre-defi­ned tech­ni­cal solu­tions. To ensure this, the pro­ject fol­lo­wed a pro­gres­sive and inter­con­nec­ted tra­jec­to­ry, star­ting with demand iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and culmi­na­ting in ope­ra­tio­nal coope­ra­tive ser­vices sup­por­ted by lear­ning, qua­li­ty control, and research.

The foun­da­tion of this tra­jec­to­ry is the Social Construc­tion of Demand (SCD), a struc­tu­red metho­do­lo­gy that enables far­mers, coope­ra­tives, and fede­ra­tions to col­lec­ti­ve­ly ana­lyse far­ming rea­li­ties and co-desi­gn rele­vant res­ponses.

Through two SCD action-trai­ning cycles invol­ving par­ti­ci­pants from 15 pri­ma­ry coope­ra­tives and 9 fede­ra­tions, far­mers consis­tent­ly iden­ti­fied two major chal­lenges :

• Decli­ning soil fer­ti­li­ty, lin­ked to repea­ted tillage and long-term use of che­mi­cal inputs, resul­ting in lower yields and rising pro­duc­tion costs ;
• Limi­ted access to pro­fi­fi­table mar­kets, dri­ven by incon­sistent qua­li­ty and irre­gu­lar sup­ply.

These prio­ri­ties were not trea­ted as iso­la­ted pro­blems, but as entry points for the deve­lop­ment of coherent coope­ra­tive ser­vices.