Crop Rotation in Agriculture
Hello, agro community friends. It is good joining us for the weeks contest. This is another good topic. Crop rotation is an age long practice that is still in use in our present agricultural practices.
This is the practice of planting several crops in a farm, which does not only improves the varities of crop yield but also helps improve the soil structure and fertility. This is an age long practice that entails we use crops from different species, nutritional requirements, and growing patterns.
It brings regulation at different spheres by considering the soil-nutrient usage and improved crop performance. The soil is well used (structurally & fertility), different crop varieties available during harvest, plants well protected from pests and diseases, and performance increased.
Benefits of Crop Rotation:
It helps to improve soil fertility. This is done by maintaining nutritional balance in the soil. In this kind of mix farming, plants of different families are combined with different growth patterns and nutrientional requirements.
Help protect the soil from unnecessary soil degradation. The cover crops could be resistant to soil leaching by protecting it from heavy rainfall and soil erosion as well.
Crop rotation also gives our farm more resistant to pest and disease prevalence. It helps to disrupt most of the pest cycles.
It improves crop yield by the different management of crop nutritional requirements. It helps improve the growth pattern and performance.
Since it helps boost soil nutrients and control pest infestation, there is less need for chemical and use of synthetic fertilizers.
It also helps improve the water holding capacity of our crops and then the less use of the irrigation system, which comes with a cost.
We have different types of crop rotation we practice here, and they seem common. The purpose of this practice is not necessarily to be hinged on most of those benefits but for the essence of optimising land space available for agricultural farms.
The Simple Rotation:
This is one of the most commonest, even in our neighbourhood farms. They involve planting and alternating two crops on the farm. Examples include corn and Yam, cassava and corn, etc.The Complex Rotation:
As the name implies, so is the practice here. We have a situation where more than two crops are involved. We have multiple crops planted on a farm such as corn, wheat, melon, and cassava.
I will be explaining this in a simple manner. Crop rotation is a practice that avail us of several benefits just like I have listed above which soil fertility is among.
The different crops we have have different growth and nutrient pattern. Some require more nutrients while others require less. A balance is created at all times hence making it possible for adequate use of soil nutrients.
This cycle of nutrient use improves soil fertility by adequate use of soil-nutrient and help in the soil preservation as well. Soil preservation could be achieved by preventing the incessant soil erosion that ravagae our farm, and also soil leaching from heavy rainfall and flooding.
It is important we also inculcate the use of cover crops to help achieve this benefit.
We must know that we have to firstly use crop-climate resistant varieties to help protect out farm from variations.
Crop rotation help to promote soil water retention which is another way to reduce the use of irrigation activities that are cost effective.
Climate change that comes with increases in pest and disease prevalence is controlled by this practice. Crop rotation disrupts the lifecycles of some of this pests and diseases.
There are plants that serve as cover to the the soil and reduce the direct activities of drought and rains.
This is my entry on crop rotation. I invite @chant, @rossnenye @impersonal.
All images are captured using my mobile device
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MODs Comment/Recommendation:
Thank you very much for participating in the contest. You have presented very nicely, the practice of planting several crops on a farm, which not only improves crop yield diversity but also improves soil structure and fertility. It is an age-old practice that we use crops from different species, nutritional requirements and growing patterns. So we must take these steps to improve our crop cultivation. Then we would expect good harvests at different times from the same. Thank you very much for the beautiful presentation about crop rotation in agriculture. Best wishes to you.
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