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Nutrients are of course required and depleted if you keep harvesting and removing them from the ecosystem. So you need a way to deliver some of that back. There

Nutrients are of course required and depleted if you keep harvesting and removing them from the ecosystem. So you need a way to deliver some of that back. There are many ways to deliver nutrients and industrially produced fertilizers are merely one of those. A lot of organic farmers instead use things like compost, crop rotation, and no-till. No till keeps the soil healthy (by not disturbing it) and minimizes nutrient losses through erosion. Compost in the form of carbon rich wood chips or dead leaves, or nitrogen rich greens, or animal waste can do the rest. Certain cover crops actually add nitrogen to the soil. They take nitrogen from the air and deposit it in their roots. When the plants are harvested, the roots remain.

cyberax 3y ago
Gah. Quite a few of nutrients are _dependent_ in nature on erosion. Phosphorus is one of them, it's normally locked in very insoluble phosphates, that get broken down by weathering (erosion). No-till farming preserves nitrogen, which is the main limiting factor in agriculture. It also allows soil to have better water retention. The BIG downside is that no-till farming doesn't disrupt pests, so they can easily crowd out crops. > Certain cover crops actually add nitrogen to the soil. They take nitrogen from the air and deposit it in their roots Yes. That's why people had to leave fields fallow, to allow nitrogen fixing plants (such as clover) to grow and then compost in-place. The problem with that is an extremely poor efficiency of biological nitrogen fixation. It's a wonder that it works at all, honestly.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > That's why people had to leave fields fallow, to allow nitrogen fixing plants (such as clover) to grow and then compost in-place Leaving fields fallow does allow the land to recover and can reduce certain pests and diseases. However, the primary purpose of leaving fields fallow historically wasn't necessarily for nitrogen-fixing plants to grow. That said, some traditional farming systems deliberately planted nitrogen-fixing cover crops, like clover, in rotation with other crops to replenish soil nitrogen. And let's not forget about nitrogen fixing trees. > an extremely poor efficiency of biological nitrogen fixation Biological nitrogen fixation may not be as immediately effective or efficient as directly applying synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, but it's a natural process that has sustained ecosystems for millennia. To say it has "extremely poor efficiency" might be an overgeneralization. In sustainable agriculture, the efficiency of nitrogen-fixing plants isn't solely measured by the speed or volume of nitrogen delivery but also by the myriad of other benefits they provide, such as improving soil structure, suppressing weeds, and promoting beneficial soil microbes. > It's a wonder that it works at all Biological nitrogen fixation is a well-established and crucial ecological process.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    I now believe that I'm talking to a bot.

cyberax 3y ago

Gah. Quite a few of nutrients are _dependent_ in nature on erosion. Phosphorus is one of them, it's normally locked in very insoluble phosphates, that get broken down by weathering (erosion). No-till farming preserves nitrogen, which is the main limiting factor in agriculture. It also allows soil to have better water retention. The BIG downside is that no-till farming doesn't disrupt pests, so they can easily crowd out crops. > Certain cover crops actually add nitrogen to the soil. They take nitrogen from the air and deposit it in their roots Yes. That's why people had to leave fields fallow, to allow nitrogen fixing plants (such as clover) to grow and then compost in-place. The problem with that is an extremely poor efficiency of biological nitrogen fixation. It's a wonder that it works at all, honestly.

myshpa 3y ago
> That's why people had to leave fields fallow, to allow nitrogen fixing plants (such as clover) to grow and then compost in-place Leaving fields fallow does allow the land to recover and can reduce certain pests and diseases. However, the primary purpose of leaving fields fallow historically wasn't necessarily for nitrogen-fixing plants to grow. That said, some traditional farming systems deliberately planted nitrogen-fixing cover crops, like clover, in rotation with other crops to replenish soil nitrogen. And let's not forget about nitrogen fixing trees. > an extremely poor efficiency of biological nitrogen fixation Biological nitrogen fixation may not be as immediately effective or efficient as directly applying synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, but it's a natural process that has sustained ecosystems for millennia. To say it has "extremely poor efficiency" might be an overgeneralization. In sustainable agriculture, the efficiency of nitrogen-fixing plants isn't solely measured by the speed or volume of nitrogen delivery but also by the myriad of other benefits they provide, such as improving soil structure, suppressing weeds, and promoting beneficial soil microbes. > It's a wonder that it works at all Biological nitrogen fixation is a well-established and crucial ecological process.
- cyberax 3y ago
  I now believe that I'm talking to a bot.