Importance of Soil

Importance of Soil

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
15-year member of the University of Idaho's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences faculty and professor soil sciences Dr. Dan Strawn has rewritten his textbook entitled "Soil Chemistry" . I called him to ask about the book but then ended up discussing soil. "It is really the foundation of what we have built our societies on in terms of food supply, water management, water quality, food security and safety and everything that is built from food and water comes from how we manage and utilize our soils. Is soiled today as productive, as rich, as helpful in terms of the food it produces as it was 50 years ago? I would say that our healthy soils are just as healthy however some of the environments where we have mismanaged them, the quality of soils is declining. We are losing soils to erosion, some of them have a buildup of salts, there are other chemicals that we don't want in them, and we are asking our soils to do more and more in terms of production of more food on less area. So we really need to know how to manage the soil so we can improve its quality, produce more food and have our watersheds healthier to create healthier and better quality water."
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