How is the soil affected by too much farming and grazing?

Soil is a living system. To much exhaustion can render the soil uncultivable. The soil nutrient status keeps on depleting after every crop cultivated. The soil fertility can be managed by suitable ammendments like organic manure addition, mulching, fallowing etc. This gives time and opportunity for the sytem to re-start. read more

Too much of it makes the soil acidic. this happens through its reaction with water producing H ions. An acidic soil impacts negatively on crop production. It deprives the crop from uptaking certain nutrients from the soil. read more

Macroporosity is a sensitive indicator of soil physical condition and is important for soil aeration and for the rapid movement of water into and through the soil. Grazing with high stocking rates in wet conditions has been shown to decrease surface soil macroporosity by as much as 60%, but typically reductions range between 10 and 40% (Singleton et al., 2000; Drewry et al., 2008). read more