Soil Fertility in Agriculture: Russia – Western Europe – USA: in the Past and Today

Abstract

An overview is presented of how scientific agriculture perceived soils as stocks for minerals for crop production, and to what extend this perception, as it is accepted in agronomy, is considered as relevant in related scientific fields. In the nineteenth century the role of microbiology in soil ecosystems was revealed, the balance of crop remnants and manure conversion was studied, as well as seasonal crop feeding at different systems of manuring, crop rotation, tillage and mixed systems, to manage the balance of crop-and livestock production under low external input conditions. Particularly after World War II, the long-term experience of 'living soils' was ruined by the practice of excessive external inputs of agrochemicals-fertilisers and subsequently pesticides. On a minimized scale, soil-friendly agriculture was and still is present in organic and biodynamic movements, together with various other agro-ecological approaches, attempting to overcome the disadvantages of industrial agronomical agriculture. On this way the FAO declared the year 2015 as the year of soil, while very the same FAO had supported the chemical agriculture for decades in the recent past. This metamorphose has appeared because the shocking soil-destructive role of industrial agronomy causing soil degradation (soil erosion, poisoning and compaction) with flooding followed by drought-the total anthropogenous uncertainty of agricultural land and biosphere as a whole is now becoming more and more obvious. Today soil-ecosystem awareness arises in plant breeding, biosphere & climate, human health, rural development, manuring and phytopathology's pesticide effects on soil ecosystems. In organic (agro-ecology) systems the main problem is the transition period, wherein the mentioned problems of soil compaction, dead-end porosity, low soil nitrogen production, low rate of crop remnants and manure conversion, soil productivity stagnation on the low level are critical. Over and again new approaches are needed to overcome the shortcomings of industrial agriculture and thus attain the higher level organic agriculture. It will be shown that organic/agro-ecological farming systems produce much better that usually known. Moreover, Biogeosystem Technique is a promising transcendental integral approach to overcome the conflict of technology and biosphere.

New approach to soil fertility management: Biogeosystem Technique methodology (critical review)

“…Optimistic strategies of priming actions on the soil system are needed to transform environmental feedback, reverse soil degradation and provide resilience of agroecosystems to stress (Lehman et al, 2015;Stolba et al, 2015;Van Mansvelt, 2017). Development of a new soil management framework is pivotal for a controlled SOM, DOM and soil microbial associations function in agroecosystems (Piccolo et al, 2019).…”

Intra-Soil Pulse Continuum-Discrete Moistening for Soil and Water Preservation

“…The most important circumstance of the new paradigm of artificial soil moistening is that conditions are created for the priority synthesis of organic matter, optimal interaction of the microbial community of the soil and the mineral phase of the soil, the formation of organic matter (Shein et al, 2016), which under the proposed humidification regime is not destroyed to fractions of granulometric composition. On the contrary, it is possible to establish a trend of improved granulometric composition due to the gradual partial aggregation of the smallest granulometric fractions into relatively larger mechanical organomineral formations (Newcomb et al, 2017), and achieve a stable increase in soil fertility (Van Mansvelt, 2017).…”