While, in the long run, we should seek to optimize agricultural practice for the improvement of soil health, along with other considerations, in the near term we should be glad for any improvement at all, since the default to be expected from ‘modern’ agriculture is some degree of lost fertility with each passing season.
Traditional practices, like crop rotations including deep-rooted plants like clover, alfalfa, and buckwheat, and like allowing livestock into fields after harvest to browse on the debris left behind, can be enough to tip the scale from degradation to marginal improvement, and can be applied now, without any change in the machinery in use.
We should do what is a matter of differing management choices now, while continuing to work on the technology that will eventually make radically improved techniques possible.
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