Crop Rotation - History, Current Crop Rotation Practices
fertility soil farmers plant
Crop rotation is a method of maintaining soil fertility and structure by planting a particular parcel of agricultural land with alternating plant species. Most crop rotation schedules require that a field contain a different crop each year, and some schemes incorporate times when the field remains uncultivated, or lies fallow. Farmers rotate crops to control erosion, promote soil fertility, contain plant diseases, prevent insect infestations, and discourage weeds. Crop rotation has been an important agricultural tool for thousands of years. Modern organic farmers depend on crop rotation to maintain soil fertility and to fight pests and weeds, functions that conventional farmers carry out with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Crop rotation can also prevent or correct some of the problems associated with monocultures (single crop farms), including persistent weeds, insect infestations, and decreased resistance to plant diseases.
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For 2,000 years, since the Romans spread their farming practices throughout the Roman Empire, European farmers followed a Roman cropping system called "food, feed, and fallow." Farmers divided their land into three sections, and each year planted a food grain such as wheat on one section, barley or oats as feed for livestock on another, and let the third plot lie fallow. On this sche…
Because climate, soil type, extent of erosion, and suitable cash crops vary around the globe, rotation schemes vary as well. The principles of crop rotation, however, are universal: to maintain soil health, combat pests and weeds, and slow erosion farmers should alternate crops with different characteristics—sod-base crops with row crops, weed-suppressing crops with those that do not suppre…
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