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GROUP DETAILS
Created: Feb 23, 2008
Updated: Nov 05, 2009
Membership: Open
Public
All Areas of Focus » Agriculture and Farming »
Soil Conservation and Management
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On farms, soil conservation and management attempts to maintain an artificial soil to maximize food production. Sustainable farm managers cultivate the soil to maximize its long-term fertility and its soil moisture holding capacity for the particular crop rotation without harming the off-farm environment. Sustainable soils, ideally, keep the soil in place (nonerosive), retain its organic content, maintain its structure of pore spaces for air, water, and microbes, and give life support to all the organisms that grow within it. Sustainable soils are difficult. Some are stripped for development and covered in asphalt or concrete. Some are drained for improved agriculture. Some of the greatest disasters of human history (e.g. the end of the Fertile Crescent, the Dust Bowl, the denuded landscapes of the Yangtze) come from abuse of soil integrity. There is no program to maintain legacy or historical soils as baselines for comparison. Soil is the medium for production of food, fiber, and forage. Soil is a form of natural capital whose financial value can be measured by a yield of crops. The natural capital portfolio increases in value with increased soil organic matter, soil-moisture holding capacity, specific structure and textures, as well as the soil's genetic resources. Sustainable fertility eliminates petrochemical inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides as well as the heavy metals found in some sewage sludges. Soil provides numerous goods and services to society. Goods include paint pigments, ceramics, adobe, gravel, medicines, sand for cement and glass, clay for adobe and filters, silicon for microchips. Services include purifying water, humidifying the air, anchoring plants, storing carbon, exchanging and transforming nutrients, reducing toxic pollution, fertilizing crops, recharging groundwater, mitigating floods and heat islands and more. Of all the crucial components of sustainability (soil, air, water, and energy), soils have received least attention even though many civilizations have collapsed from ignoring human impacts on soils. |
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Keywords topsoil, tilth, soil structure, soil texture, water holding capacity, soil fertility, humus, organic matter, soil erosion, runoff, gully erosion, rill erosion, sheet erosion, sedimentation, strip cropping, grassed waterways, contour plowing, leaching losses, soil nutrients, micronutrients, mycorrhizal fungi, soil compaction, no-till, mulch-till, tillage plowing, agro-chemicals, windbreaks, soil stewardship, sustainable agriculture and farming, soil as a malleable material, soil as an organizer for life, soil as fertile life-support, soil as an organizer of society, sustainable soils, healthy soil |
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