Soil health is crucial to the performance of crops and gardens, providing plants with essential nutrients while also controlling water, airflow, and microbial activity. Get the Best information about attendance at Agricola.
Maintaining healthy soil requires multiple approaches. Limiting tillage reduces erosion while saving money on machinery, fuel, and labor costs. Meanwhile, adding farmyard manures or alternative organic inputs such as digestate, compost or biosolids increases organic matter in your soil.
- Improves the structure of the soil
Soil provides essential functions and services: it anchors roots and nutrients, helps prevent soil erosion, purifies our water supplies, and stores carbon for climate mitigation – but unfortunately, many global soils are becoming degraded. But with appropriate interventions focusing on structural renewal, we can restore healthy soil.
Soils are composed of solids and pore spaces – gaps between particles – known as the soil matrix. A well-structured agricultural soil features ample pore spaces, enabling free circulation of air and water as well as unimpeded root development. A quality soil typically comprises 50% solids to 25% air content with any remaining space comprising pores; though this varies depending on its type.
Organic matter content in soil is a key factor for its structure, and this can be increased through various land management practices. Integrating crop residues into fields is one such practice that can increase organic matter and enhance soil structure while simultaneously providing plants with essential nutrients and helping suppress weeds.
Crop rotation is another effective means of improving soil health. Overly cultivated fields deplete certain nutrients while others are left underutilized; by rotating crops regularly, you can help balance out nutrient levels and sustain soil fertility. Leguminous crops (such as cowpeas, field peas, and fava beans) have long been known for fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil nitrogen levels to benefit subsequent plants that follow them.
The addition of compost or well-rotted manure is one way to increase soil organic matter and strengthen soil structure, but it must be done responsibly so as not to deplete its natural nitrogen sources.
- Enhances microbial activity
Soil microbes play an indispensable role in healthy soil and crop production. They help cycle nutrients, break down organic material into absorbable forms for plants to use, suppress diseases while decreasing the need for synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and improve nutrient uptake capacity and stress tolerance to boost crop yield potential and decrease cost per yield potential.
A variety of factors, including climate, land use, and quality influence the amount of beneficial microbes found in soil, such as climate. There are ways to increase their numbers; such as increasing soil organic matter via composting or planting cover crops as part of crop rotation programs or composting can improve health by encouraging beneficial bacteria.
Increase beneficial microorganism numbers by applying microbial inoculants or amendments to soil, such as inoculants. By encouraging the presence of these organisms, farmers can ensure their fields contain plenty of the essential nutrients for plant uptake while simultaneously decreasing the leaching of nitrates into groundwater supplies and encouraging nutrient cycling.
An agricultural soil improver of high quality can provide essential nutrients to the soil while also encouraging beneficial microbes to flourish, cutting back on chemical fertilizers while decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture and enabling farmers to maximize crop yield without jeopardizing health or biodiversity.
Growers can measure several indicators to assess the health of their soil, including earthworm numbers, microbial biomass levels, particulate organic carbon levels, respiration rate, and enzyme activity. A soil testing lab can also analyze nutrient levels and check for contaminants; to get accurate results an agricultural soil improver should be applied to an in-field sample that represents its entire health status.
- Prevents nutrient leaching
As we continue to feed a growing world, soil health has become more widely acknowledged. Soil is essential in providing plant roots with oxygen-rich environments, retaining water and organic matter for plant roots to access, supporting wildlife and pollinators, and protecting archeological treasures – not to mention archeological treasures! However, more importantly, fertile soil supports healthy plants by cycling nutrients, biologically controlling pests, providing adequate air supply, as well as providing enough water and air supply for roots and microbial activity.
Soil erosion and leaching pose serious threats to agriculture, reducing soil fertility, speeding acidification, increasing fertilizer costs for farmers, and ultimately decreasing crop yields [1-3]. Furthermore, excess nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) runoff may contaminate drinking water sources as well as cause the eutrophication of freshwater habitats [2, 3].
One effective strategy to prevent nutrient leaching is through sustainable agricultural management practices such as no-till farming, cover crops, and diversified rotations. These practices help reduce compaction while increasing soil organic matter content and improving water infiltration and drainage. Furthermore, adding soil improvers like gypsum into fields is another essential step.
Gypsum offers several advantageous properties that can help prevent leaching of nutrients from the soil, including improving its water-holding capacity (WHC). Gypsum forms large pores within the soil to increase the surface area where water can adhere, making it less likely to leach out. Furthermore, it has also proven successful at improving acid soils with unfavorable calcium/magnesium ratios by treating aluminum toxicity caused by these conditions and leading to deeper rooting and improved plant growth.
- Increases water-holding capacity
Organic matter increases soil water-holding capacity by binding soil particles together into larger aggregates that hold more water. This allows microbes to release it in plant-available forms, thus decreasing soil evaporation.
An increase in soil water-holding capacity makes it easier for plants to reach their full growth potential, leading to increased yield and quality crops in dry climates where water and nutrient deficiencies may be the biggest barriers to production.
Soil improvers also work to stop the leaching of nutrients into the environment, making sure that your crops receive all of their necessary nutrition to grow properly. They help with compaction reduction and drainage improvement – making them a smart choice for any garden or yard!
Soil erosion is an all-too-familiar, natural process in both natural and agricultural settings; however, its severity can be substantially mitigated with terraces or cover crops between rows. Both methods help keep phosphorus and other nutrients from washing away into rivers or streams and polluting our drinking water supplies.
Gypsum added to soil can also help stop the leaching of nutrients, by decreasing salt levels in the soil and helping retain water so it won’t become oversaturated. Furthermore, adding gypsum allows water to move through it easily in sandy or clay soils that might otherwise make this task challenging.
As another way of increasing soil water-holding capacity, try rotating crops or growing legumes such as cowpeas, field peas, or fava beans. These species fix nitrogen in the soil while also providing protein-rich foods for humans and livestock as well as improving microbial health in your soil. In addition, they can act as green manures to suppress weeds while adding valuable organic matter rich with essential vitamins and nutrients – and encouraging beneficial insects.
- Prevents compaction
Compressed soil can have serious repercussions for crop yields and be an additional contributor to erosion and runoff, while also compromising soil health by impeding proper infiltration of water and movement of nutrients within it. Prevention is the key to combatting soil compaction; keeping machinery off wet soils while performing field operations that increase pore space by draining wet areas or using controlled traffic lanes or permanent beds, reducing tillage, or adding organic matter into the mix are effective approaches to deal with compaction.
Heavy equipment and wheel traffic are two primary causes of soil compaction, most often occurring during spring tillage to prepare fields for planting or during fall harvesting of crops. Wet soils may cause machines to slip or sink while placing unnecessary stress on wheels – with increased chances for compaction at the first crossing of fields (Voorhees 1987).
An agricultural soil improver helps prevent compaction by adding organic matter that nourishes and fortifies a healthier and more resilient soil. Soil improvers also increase pore space in the ground to facilitate root development and uptake of nutrients; plus they can help reduce the size and number of clods found on agricultural fields.
Ideal soil should have a low bulk density and a wide range of pore spaces with different pore sizes, providing vital pore spaces essential to soil health and structure, nutrient uptake, and plant growth. By adding organic matter, organic bacteria, and fungi will flourish to form stable aggregates that improve their quality over time.
