Fertility is .. The fertility of the earth. Fertility factors

The main property of land soils as natural elements is their fertility. From this quality depends the vitality of all living beings of the planet, plants and, of course, people.

Soil as the main component of nature uses all its resources (sun energy, nutrients), generates them into so-called useful substances and supplies them with plants, which in turn are consumed by both animals and humanity. Bio-physical and chemical processes occurring in soil cover are not simple, and its fertility depends on the content of constituents in the soil (falling into it and formed in it).

What characterizes the fertility of the soil?

From the foregoing, it is concluded that land fertility is the ability of soils of various types to provide growth and reproduction of all kinds of plants with favorable conditions that are not limited to a balanced combination of moisture and heat.

Ancient symbols of the fertility of the earth

Symbol of fertility of the ancient Slavs was a rhombus, divided schematically into four parts, each segment of the figure depicted a point. The rhombus meant cultivated fields, and the points - the cultures growing on them.

The symbol of fertility was applied to tools of agricultural labor, the walls of the house and brought, according to the belief of the ancient inhabitants, prosperity and grace. The represented lozenge to some extent became the founder of the division of agricultural lands into separate plots, and then the fields.

In modern times, the symbol of the fertility of the earth is a spikelet or a sown wheat field.

Classification of fertility

Fertility is not only a natural property of the land, but also an indicator of the quality of the soil, which is the most important criterion in agricultural production.

From the agrotechnical point of view, the following types of land fertility are distinguished:

• Natural (natural);
• Artificial (effective);
• Economic.

Many modern agronomists are guided by these concepts, who carry out an analysis of the state of fertility and, depending on the indicator obtained, apply this or that technology of cultivation of soil coverings of agricultural lands.

Characteristics of fertility species

Natural fertility is an indicator of the quality of the soil, which it possesses without various interferences of human, labor and mechanical resources, as well as chemical and mineral constituents. In modern times, this indicator is high only in those areas where modern technological processes of cultivation of lands are not being applied. The percentage of those for today is very low.

Effective fertility is the qualities that the land possesses as a result of direct impact on it of purposeful human labor and enterprise, which include all agrotechnical processes using a mechanized resource, reclamation and, of course, the use of fertilizers - organic and mineral, as well as those that destroy Pests. Effective fertility is created in order to achieve high yields, to realize them and to obtain high profits.

Economic fertility is an indicator of the economic valuation of lands, the basis of which is its potential ability to bear fruit and economic properties of certain areas.

The potential capacity of lands is understood as a combination of their natural properties and the man acquired as a result of cultivation of land.

Natural fertility is the most in demand at the present time due to depletion of many soil grounds due to excessive mechanized processes. Many modern landowners are trying to gradually move to the natural restoration of soil quality without the use of agrotechnical and agrochemical measures.

Characteristics of relative soil fertility

The above mentioned types of fertility can be reduced to one more definition - to relative fertility, which is understood as the ability of ground soil to feed certain plant species and to reject others. And no observance of crop rotation does not give any positive result on such soils.

In all natural processes, soil soils and vegetation types are very closely related and determine the positive properties of each other. After all, the growth of plants, their yield and natural strength are due to the fertility of soils, and it, in turn, depends on the type of vegetation growing on the soil cover.

If the vegetative background of the land changes, then their fertility also changes. If you evaluate all the earths of the globe, you can see that the desert areas are much smaller than those that are filled with their inherent vegetation. Thus, wetlands are filled with hygrophilous vegetation, forest plantations are suitable for acid podzolic soils or solonchaks. From this it follows that all types of soils have their limits of natural fertility, but not in assessing the overall index, but with respect to certain plant species.

Hence, the conclusion is that different parts of the soil cover have unequal soil fertility with respect to potentiality and efficiency in relation to many plant species.

Since there is a clear understanding that certain soils have the potential for favorable cultivation of certain crops, the most profitable lands are used for agricultural purposes. In the main these are fertile chernozems.

Elements of land fertility

Soil fertility is formed in the process of its natural structuring and is determined not by a single feature, for example, the content of nutrients or humus, but also covers all its characteristic characteristics. The fertility of individual plots is determined not only by the state of the upper soil layers, but also depends on the deep structure that affects vegetation with a deep root system.

Thus, fertility depends entirely on the profile of the land plot, on its upper and lower structures, on the availability of groundwater, on the quality of subsoil layers - clay or rocky. The elements of the land fertility index include the physical, biological and chemical properties of the soil and their annual dynamics-the granulometric composition of the land profile, the structure of the soil layers, the water-physical properties, the biological components, the ability to absorb heat and moisture.

Classification of agricultural land, depending on the fertility rate

Land is the main means of production in agriculture, the fertility of which is always the main theme of the day. It is the soil fertility predetermines the future crop rotation. From the quality of the soil, the planned final result on harvesting always depends.

Agricultural land - agricultural land, which include hayfields and pastures, deposits, perennial plantations and arable land.

Hayfields are areas used for haymaking in order to provide livestock with herbal food during the winter growing period. Depending on their fertility, they are classified into flooded areas - the richest in succulent vegetation, dry-bottomed, swamped, hard-to-reach, filled with shrubs or forests in the districts, clogged with stones and hummocks, artificially improved clean.

Pastures are land that is intended for pasturing cattle in spring, summer, autumn growing periods. Vegetation in pastures is more scarce than in hayfields, due to the influence of the factor of numerous trampling by many species of plants. They, in turn, are subdivided into dry and wetlands, cultivated improved.

To perennial plantations are fruit orchards and berry orchards, vineyards. Zalezhi is unused for sowing more than a year of arable land.

And the most valuable type of agricultural land is arable land, which is used for sowing cereals, corn, sunflower, rapeseed, buckwheat and planting of vegetable crops. Depending on the indicator of natural fertility, the arable land is classified into irrigated, drained, insufficiently moistened, prone to erosion and clogged with stones.

Estimation of land fertility

Depending on the purpose of agricultural land, an assessment is made of their potential properties to reproduce a certain number of crops of certain crops.

Lands of agricultural purpose in combination with the natural plant balance can be characterized by an indicator of a high level of fertility and its low value. Fertility is determined by the specific gravity of the biomass accumulating in the soil cover due to the growth of either one or other crops on the land.

The main indicator of fertility in agricultural production is the yield of arable soils. The land state cadastre, dividing the land by the quality of fertility, focuses on the magnitude of the potential yield indicator, which can not be stable if the soil is used inappropriately or does not adhere to a certain crop rotation that does not deplete soil fertility, but, on the contrary, increases the potential capacity High yields.

Soil fatigue of agricultural lands

Very many land experts hold the opinion that the fertility of the land increases due to modern scientific and technical methods of its cultivation. However, many years of practice shows the opposite result, which characterizes its decline. Not always the cultivation of the land cover leads to the preservation of the natural balance of the structure of the soil cover.

Each crop grown on a particular plot of land changes the natural biochemical composition of the soil and selects a lot of nutrients from it. This requires additional measures to restore fertility. Evaporation of moisture, soil erosion, low content of humus and nutrients is the result of unprofessional cultivation of land.

If in the first years of cultivation of land the soil resource is characterized by high fertility, then after several years of its operation with the help of mechanized processing, this index significantly decreases due to the depletion of the land upper layers, due to which various agrotechnical measures are taken to restore natural balance by artificial methods. If you do not take any measures, the land loses its ability to produce high yields and this process is called soil fatigue.

Fertility factors

From the foregoing, it follows that the fertility of cultivated land is affected by certain factors that reflect the interrelationship of soil, microorganisms and plants.

These include the acidity, clay content, salt and alkali content, heat content, water content, surface slope, chemical and biological soil toxicosis, lack of aeration.

Elimination and minimization of influencing factors for the reduction of soil fertility

The increase in soil fertility reduces to agrotechnical measures that restore the natural balance of land and minimize the impact of the above factors:

• With excess acidity liming of soils is performed;
• With excess content of alkalis - acidification, gypsum, application of physiologically acidic fertilizers;
• With excess salts - washing groundwater;
• At high clay - deep loosening, sand application;
• At a high density of the soil cover - loosening, grass-sowing and structuring of soil composition;
• With a lack of nutrients - the introduction of mineral and organic fertilizers;
• In chemical and biological toxicosis - fallow and agrotechnological reclamation.

Seasonal soil fertilizer

Often an increase in the fertility of the plowland is carried out by the introduction of mineral fertilizers. It is these elements that are the source of the nutrient chemicals that the plants lack.

Fertilizing the soil in the spring implies the introduction of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. In the autumn period, the soil is enriched with nutrients through the use of organic fertilizer types - manure, humus, vegetable slurry.

Improving the fertility of agricultural land

The increase in soil fertility is affected not only by soil fertilization in spring and autumn, but also by the correct observance of the proportions of fertilizers introduced, since the lack and surplus of these are characterized by a decrease in the yield of land.

Soil fertilization is always combined with indicators of crop rotation, mechanized cultivation and meliorative measures.