HISTORIC AND ACTUAL AWARENESS OF SOIL FERTILITY IN AGRICULTURE: RUSSIA – WESTERN EUROPE – USA: DRAFT OF A SURVEY
2017
Mansvelt, Jan Diek Van
in this paper I present an overview of how scientists in agriculture perceived the soils that produce the crops, and then I try to find out how these perceptions are – more or less consciously – included in agronomy and various related disciplines. In microbiology the notion of complex soil ecosystems came up in the nineteenth century. Conversion of crop remnants and manure on the one hand and feeding the crops on the other hand were studied as a balance in time (seasons), of manuring, crop rotation and (minimal) tillage in mixed systems. Therein crop – and livestock production were managed to be in balance. But that notion and its experience of ‘living soils’ were overruled by an upcoming use of the external inputs of agrochemicals – fertilisers and subsequently pesticides – after World War II. However, minimalized in the sideline, soil-friendly agriculture survived in organic and biodynamic movements, in this century enhanced by various similar approaches like agro-ecology. And then the FAO declared the year 2015 as the year of the soil, as the chemical agriculture they had supported for decades, had appeared to be shockingly soil-destructive: causing soilerosion and subsequently flooding followed by drought. Furthermore I present the soil-ecosystem awareness of today in various disciplines such as plant breeding, biosphere & climate, human health, rural development, manuring, phytopathology (including pesticide effects in soil ecosystems).
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