Phosphate enrichment in the sandy loam soils of West-Flanders, Belgium

The last three decades, pig breeding has evolved towards a specialised, large scaled, land independent bio-industry in the province of West-Flanders. Subsequently, in certain regions, very high amounts of liquid pig manure are produced each year. This pig slurry is used as a fertilizer at a rate which very often exceeds normal agricultural practices. Because of the nonequilibrium between the phosphorus crop requirements and the P-inputs, phosphates accumulate in the soil. However, the phosphate sorption capacity of a soil is limited. Once the sorption capacity is exceeded, phosphates will start leaching through the soil profile. Since, during winter, in these areas, the groundwater table is situated at a depth of less than 1.0 m, phosphate breakthrough might take place. In the sandy loam soil region (+/- 1000 km2) of the province, an inventory of the P status of the soil was made. The region was sampled according to a regular grid with 2 km intervals. At random, some sample points were only 500 m apart. This resulted in a total of 296 samplings. In view of fertilizer recommendations, lactate extractable P of the plough layer (0-30 cm) was determined. A maximum value of 101 mg P 100 g-1 of air dry soil, a minimum value of 6 mg P 100 g-1 and a median value of 31 mg P 100 g-1 were found, indicating that for half of the spots monitored, the P status of the soil is high to very high. An oxalate extraction was done to investigate the phosphate saturation of the soil profile (0-90 cm). Based on a critical phosphate saturation degree of 30%, more than half of the soil profiles are phosphate saturated. Phosphate leaching at a rate higher than 0.1 mg ortho-P l-1 at a depth of 90 cm can be expected. Therefore, a restriction of the P fertilization should be highly recommended. The geostatistical processing of the data using block kriging resulted in a spatial continuous estimate of the phosphate saturation degree. A good agreement was found between the pig density and the phosphate saturation degree of the soil profile.