Feldspar
Member
- Location
- Essex, Cambs and Suffolk
I agree. We're losing our solutions that come out of a bag or can - I see UK ag turning a full circle back to mixed farming with various forms of livestock. Not necessarily the types that our fathers & grandfathers had, but AD plants, algae production, green manures, recycled waste streams etc.
Soil organic matters have declined to their current low levels but the rate of decline is slowing. Stubble burning and ploughing are the worst IMO and no till and cover crops are the best, with manuring at the very top. Cultivation and crop removal reduces it. We're lucky in this country not to have as many extreme weather events as the Amazon basin or the Dust Bowl so our soil loss (not just depreciation/degradation) isn't as bad.
I still often think of this post and link from @KJM as a way of questioning whether we really are on a straight line path to doom:
Interesting link I found
http://www.era.rothamsted.ac.uk/home/studies/PoultonSOMposter.pdf
It would suggest just because SOM has dropped from its original level in grass, doesn't mean you can project a straight line to zero and eternal doom. The results suggest the soil will stabilise at a new level for the management it is under. Many farms may have been in continuous arable for long enough to have stabilised at their new lower level.