What alternatives are there to farming artificial fertilizers?
Depending on where you are, there are huge amounts of natural materials to build/ rebuild soil and local materials are favored to reduce the need for transportation and dependence on oil/ fuel. Nurturing the soil is key to a working agricultural system as nature intended, and health soil environment means healthy plants and less need for other amendments and remedies. Your alternatives are all local ones and balance threw knowledge is the prerequisite.
First, artificial fertilizer is an oxymoron. Nutrients are nutrients. They are neither natural nor artificial. Plants require 16 nutrients for growth, and these nutrients must be in certain chemical forms to be available for plant growth (example Nitrogen (N) is available for plant use in the forms of ammonium, nitrate or nitrite). Any other form makes the nutrient plant unavailable, consequently ineffective as a nutrient source. Consequently, the nutrient must either be applied in a plant available form, or must be converted into a plant available form. The good news, soils are complex dynamic systems and nutrients convert to a variety of forms. The alternatives to chemical salts (this is the form of most “artificial” fertilizers) are rather limited. Mostly it is the management of manures, cover crops, crop rotation and microbial population/activities. This requirement for an increase in management as not been associated with an increase in farm profitability. Consequently, this is no
Commerical fertilizers usually focus on Nitrogen. While there are many essential nutrients required for plants to grow Nitrogen is a key ingredient. The overuse of nitrogen in any form can lead to excess runoff into rivers, lakes, and streams. This runoff causes a large amount of alge growth with can kill fish and create large seaweed type growth in small neighborhood lakes etc. The best way to combat this is to use crop rotation with crops that provide “Nitrogen fixation”. these plants put nitrogen back into the soil in a chemical form that does not simply wash away with the next spring rain. Soybeans (any beans for that matter) are very good at providing nitrogen fixation. Tubers (potatoes are a type of tuber) also provide this to the soil. The number one problem with growing these all at the same time (which would provide great benefit) is that there are currently no mechanized farming machines that allow the cultivation of these crops so we are left to using the “older” standardize
