Organic and Mineral Nutrients are Necessary to Maintain Soil Fertility

It’s a popular farmer saying that humanity simply would not exist without the top six inches of soil that covers our lands.

This nutrient-rich layer, which many of us take for granted, is becoming even more important as global temperatures continue to rise. And if we dig beneath the surface, we soon see that taking care of our soil has to become a global priority, especially in the regions where climate change hits hardest and food insecurity is still rife.

In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, farmers have traditionally cleared land, grown a few crops, then moved on to clear more land, leaving the land fallow to regain its fertility.

But population pressure now forces many farmers to grow crop after crop on the same land, “mining” or depleting the soil of nutrients while giving nothing back. With limited access to fertilizers, farmers are then either forced to work increasingly marginal lands, where the soil is less fertile, or continue to carve out farmland from forests or pasture lands, at tremendous expense to Africa’s biodiversity and to climate change.

http://www.agweb.com/article/feed-the-soil-first-then-feed-the-world-naa-agweb-guest-editor/

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