Soil management
Soil management refers to the various practices and techniques employed to maintain and improve soil health and productivity, particularly in agricultural contexts. It encompasses a wide array of activities, including tillage, planting, fertilization, and the application of herbicides and insecticides. The approach to soil management varies depending on the soil's intended use, whether for crops, forestry, or construction purposes. Key methods include conventional tillage, which often disrupts soil structure and can lead to erosion, and conservation tillage, which aims to minimize soil disturbance and retain crop residue to protect the soil.
In addition to cultivation techniques, soil management also incorporates physical modifications, such as creating terraces to control water flow and installing tile drains to improve drainage in wet soils. The addition of chemical inputs, such as lime and fertilizers, is another critical aspect of soil management, aimed at enhancing soil fertility and structure. Recently, advancements in technology, such as GPS-driven site-specific management, have emerged to optimize chemical applications and reduce environmental impact. Overall, effective soil management plays a vital role in sustaining agricultural productivity, conserving natural resources, and supporting ecological health.
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Soil management
Soil management refers to the collection of tillage, conservation, and cropping practices that are used to preserve soil resources while optimizing soil use.
Definition
Soils are managed differently depending on their intended use. Soil management groups are soil types with similar adaptations or management requirements for specific purposes, such as use with crops or cropping rotations, drainage, fertilization, forestry, highway engineering, and construction. For agriculture, soil management includes all tillage and planting operations, cropping practices, fertilization, liming, irrigation, and application, and other treatments conducted on or applied to the soil surface for the production of plants.
Overview
The most basic aspect of soil management is the way in which it is cultivated or tilled for crop growth. Tillage is the mechanical manipulation of the soil profile to modify soil conditions, manage crop residues or weeds, or incorporate chemicals for crop production. Tillage can be exhaustive or minimal. Conventional tillage uses multiple tillage operations to bury existing crop residue and prepare a uniform, weed-free seedbed for planting. This method breaks up soil aggregates in the process and destroys soil structure. Consequently, it can result in excessive wind and water erosion. tillage, or minimum tillage, involves soil management practices that leave much more crop residue on the soil surface and cause much less soil disruption. As a result, the soil is less susceptible to erosion, and the plant residue acts as a mulch to protect the soil surface from the destructive impact of rainfall as well as to reduce evaporation. No tillage, or chemical tillage, is a soil management practice adapted to sloping soils in which herbicides rather than tillage are used to control weeds, while the disruption of soil structure is limited to a narrow slit in the soil surface in which the seeds are planted.
Soil management extends to the way in which soils are manipulated. Terraces, for example, are raised horizontal strips of earth constructed along the contour of a hill to slow the movement of downward-flowing water. Tile drains are perforated ceramic or plastic pipes buried in poorly drained soils that act as underground channels to carry water away, lower the water table, and allow a soil to drain faster after rainfall. The benefit of managing potentially erodible soils on hill slopes as permanent pastures has gained increasing recognition. Likewise, the value of retaining wet soils as wetlands has been acknowledged. Wetlands provide wildlife habitat, assist in flood control, and act as buffers to protect surface waterways from nutrient and soil runoff from cultivated fields.
Soil management also involves the addition of chemicals to soil: lime to make acid soils more neutral; fertilizers to increase the nutrient level; herbicides and insecticides to control weed and insect pests; and soil conditioners to improve soil aggregation, structure, and permeability. A growing technology is the use of mobile global positioning system (GPS) units attached to the equipment that applies these chemicals to soil. Called “site specific management,” it uses computer technology to regulate chemical addition based on the exact position in a field and previous yield or fertility maps that indicate whether the soil needs to be amended. The goal of site specific management is to optimize chemical use and profit while minimizing potential chemical loss to other environments by only applying the chemicals to areas where they are needed.
"Introduction to Soils: Managing Soils." PennState Extension, 6 Jan. 2023, extension.psu.edu/introduction-to-soils-managing-soils. Accessed 6 Jan. 2024.
Strauss, Veronika, et al. "Sustainable Soil Management Measures: A Synthesis of Stakeholder Recommendations." Agronomy for Sustainable Development, vol. 43, no. 17, 1 Feb. 2023, doi.org/10.1007/s13593-022-00864-7. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025.
Topp, Emmaline, et al. "Mediterranean Farmers’ Understandings of ‘Good Soil Management’ and ‘Good Farmer’ Identity in the Context of Conservation Agriculture." International Journal of Agriculture and Sustainability, vol. 22, no. 1, 17 Ap5. 2024, doi.org/10.1080/14735903.2024.2335083. Accessed 6 Jan. 2025.