Excerpt
The concept of “T”—a tolerable level of soil loss from erosion to maintain agricultural productivity—has been an integral part of erosion control for decades. However, when the 1985 farm bill designated T as the benchmark for conservation compliance, T was transformed from a technical tool into a soil conservation ideology. T was no longer simply a benchmark for erosion control, but it also became a benchmark for determining whether the soil resource had been adequately protected and for targeting conservation efforts.
We should retain T as an erosion control target and a tool for tracking soil erosion protection, but we need to move on to a different philosophical basis for assessing and allocating institutional resources for soil conservation—that basis is overall soil quality improvement.
Improving soil quality goes beyond erosion control to improving soil structure, infiltration, water and nutrient holding capacity, soil organic matter, and soil biological diversity. These improvements require a site-specific set of crop and soil management techniques including reduced tillage, increased biomass production, crop rotation, nutrient management, and pest management.
If soil quality improvement is adopted as the philosophical basis of soil conservation, then we still need a …
Footnotes
Dr. William Puckett Is the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service's Soil Quality Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
- Copyright 2004 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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