Sustainable Agriculture, Soil Health, and Soil Organic Matter
نویسنده
چکیده
The latter two principles protect the soil resource on which all food and fibre production ultimately depends. However, agricultural production systems differ from ‘natural’ or undeveloped systems in that they can be considered to be ‘leaky’ with respect to nutrients. This is inevitable, due to nutrient removal in harvested product, but inappropriate fertiliser management can exacerbate the ‘leakiness’ by causing off-site nutrient movement. Table 1 summarises the differences between ‘natural’ and agricultural production systems, and indicates the symptoms of soil degradation which become apparent when the ‘developed’ system is not sustainable.
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