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Agriculture in Niger is a complex and challenging operation. Farmers are faced with low-fertility sandy soils, variable rainfall, changing social and political situations and an unfavourable economic environment. Concerns about sustaining soil fertility have been voiced by agricultural scientists, who view agriculture as the maintenance of soil nutrient capital. Many of the biological and economic attributes of these farming systems have been documented, and are becoming better understood through the growing body of agroecological literature. Although agroecology recognises social, political and cultural interactions, much less is known about the specific details of farmers' physical and biological knowledge and how this knowledge is used to make management decisions. Research in Fandou Béri village identified a local ethnopedological framework that had fundamental differences from scientific systems. Farmers' …