Soil conservation: importance, techniques and practices

The conservation of soil includes all those techniques and practices focusing on sustainable use and maintenance of soil that are used as a natural resource, both in agriculture and forestry and livestock.

Due to the fact that it is currently a non-renewable resource and that the loss of soils constitutes one of the main environmental problems worldwide, soil conservation is considered of vital importance to guarantee that the various ecological, climatological, and hydrological factors , social, economic and cultural interact with each other, using soils in a sustainable way. You may also be interested in learning more about soils by reading this other AgroCorrn article about the different types of soils and their main characteristics .

In the following section we will be able to learn in more detail why soil conservation is so important within the global conservation of nature.

Promoting sustainable land use has emerged in response to the many and diverse problems faced by the quality and quantity of soils suitable for growing food and trees around the world.

Various studies have estimated that nature alone can take about 200 years to produce 1 cm of fertile soil, so it is really important to protect and care for them to ensure their conservation, since otherwise, they are capable of easily becoming impoverished and very little time.

Among the main problems that soils are suffering are:

• Soil erosion , as well as compaction, increased salinity and acidity of the soil.
• Inadequate management of farmland, creating an imbalance within the productive system, which is directly related to the shortage of food that we could suffer in the not too distant future.
• The world’s population (around 8,000 million inhabitants), forces humanity to have at least one billion hectares of agricultural land to guarantee its food needs. This fact supposes constant pressure on the productive potential of soils, as well as natural resources in general.

Therefore, at present, many sectors are working to renew and condition the productive techniques related to the preservation of soils , trying to make the practices adopted by farmers, foresters and ranchers as appropriate as possible and always oriented to the conservation of this limited resource, which can never be wasted. Learn more in this other post about The importance of soils and also know the importance of the Conservation of natural resources in general in this other article.

Next, we will indicate different practices and techniques that allow the recovery, conservation and increase of the natural fertility of soils .

Among the different techniques and practices that allow proper land management , and that help reverse the impoverishment and degradation of soils as a natural resource, we find:

• Take samples and carry out soil analysis in order to know its characteristics and physicochemical properties, thus being able to detect any type of deficiencies.
• Perform rotation and association of crops, thus favoring the work and agricultural machinery that turn the soils to a minimum.
• Do the sowing directly, without applying any type of herbicides or chemical fertilizers.
• Conserve soil organisms, which guarantee the natural fertility (chemical, physical and biological) of soils, as well as good crop productivity.
• Application of natural fertilizers (decomposing cow or chicken manure, worm castings, compost compost or ashes, among others).
• Place live or dead mulch on the ground, thus allowing the soil to retain its moisture and nutrients characteristic of the upper layers of the soil.

These and many more are the main soil conservation techniques and practices that are carried out through ” ecological soil management “, one of the main projects carried out by agroecology programs.

If you want to read more articles similar to Soil conservation: importance, techniques and practices , we recommend that you enter our category of Other environment .