NUTRIENT CYCLE

Healthy soil is full of nutrients and micro organisms. On farms, the nutrient cycle is somewhat different. Since crops are continually harvested or eaten by grazing livestock, there is no steady supply of decaying plant material to replenish nutrient levels within the soil. Instead, nutrients must be restored by adding fertilizers to the soil. This is the artificial method.

Traditionally, agricultural soils were fertilized using livestock manure, which is rich in nutrients and organic matter. Farmers also practiced crop rotation, regularly alternating the types of crop grown in various fields and periodically allowing fields to remain un planted. This process enables organic matter to accumulate and decompose, thus restoring nutrients to the soil.

But now, industrial agriculture has dramatically altered the nutrient management practices used on farms. Today, livestock are raised on enormous concentrated animal feeding operations, and crops are mass-produced on separate farms. Livestock generate tremendous amounts of manure and it is too costly to transport it to other cropland for use as fertilizer.

Traditionally all the farmers have their own cattle and use these for their field.  So they finished their work with less cost and in a natural healthy way. But now there is minimum number of families in the village and all are migrated to nearby towns and so they do not have a cattle of their own. So that they use artificial fertilizers for their comfort and forgot to remind about the soil.  If the soil has a power to speak to human, it fights with human for putting artificial fertilizers.