Why do farmers use crop rotation?
Crop rotation avoids a decrease in soil fertility, as growing the same crop repeatedly in the same place eventually depletes the soil of various nutrients. A crop that leaches the soil of one kind of nutrient is followed during the next growing season by a dissimilar crop that returns that nutrient to the soil or draws a different ratio of nutrients, for example, rices followed by cottons. By crop rotation farmers can keep their fields under continuous production, without the need to let them lie fallow, and reducing the need for artificial fertilizers, both of which can be expensive. Crop rotation is also used to control pests and diseases that can become established in the soil over time. Plants within the same taxonomic family tend to have similar pests and pathogens.
plants and trees have their chemical requirements ,which they remove from the soil . they also have chemical wastes which they discard , when a mono cultive is planted thousands of the same plant ocupy the same chemicals depleting the soils of THATchemical and making it poor or tired And the same thousands of plants saturate the soils with the same chemical they discard and so contaminating it Diversity is the answer to healthy soil conditions and one can do this in various ways , by practising Agro forestal ,which agricuture mixed with a variety of trees diversity planting ,lines of different crops ,planted side by side crop rotation is another way plant a crops of specific requirement and wastes and then follow this with another crop that is different so maintaing a healthy balance in the soil so that a variety of chemicals is required and a variety of chemicals is produced for example Acacias produce a lot of Nitrogen ,which a lot of vegetables need so one could plant acacias on the
Because different crops take different nutrients from the soil and by changing the type of crop grown on a cycle of something like three years it gives the land a chance to recuperate. Also some crops have diseases that will spread to the next year’s crop if the same type is grown and rotation helps to prevent this.There are also years when nothing is grown,that is the ground is fallow,again allowing the ground to recover its nutrients and minerals.It’s all part of good husbandry and land management.
