Soil and its agroecological management

Dear readers, for a long time the lands have been tilled with implements that although it provides help for the planting of crops in the medium and long term can deteriorate it, that deterioration is related to the loss of productivity or potentiality of the land by the loss of the action of natural processes and the action of man to produce food.

Part of the deterioration in the previous acapite is linked to the soil biota, depending on the type of tillage to be executed on the soil, conventional tillage provides some benefits to the soil, that is, it breaks the aggregates into desired sizes, thus providing greater porous spaces for aeration and water retention, but at the same time damages the biota thereof, because conventional tillage consists of primary and secondary operations, in the primary it is aimed at breaking the structure of the horizon A, with a high frequency of heavy implement passes, and then the secondary operations that consist of pulverizing the soil, with a series of passes of implements specialized in that function.

All this makes the soil transform into large clods; this exposes to the surface all the anaerobic organisms to the surface of the soil and the aerobic biota to the lower part of the horizon A, consequently, part of the soil biota dies because it is exposed to conditions adverse to its living environment, in addition, it totally exposes the soil particles to water and wind erosion, thus causing great losses of sediments and degrading the quality of the soil,

The intensive and indiscriminate use of mechanized tillage systems tends to deteriorate the soil structure and is therefore partly responsible for soil erosion and degradation; for example, machinery and working animals compacting the soil, and tillage, although breaking the aggregates into desired sizes, also adversely affects the structure to the extent that it exposes the aggregates to the action of raindrops.

As alternatives to reduce the impact of mechanized tillage, various conservation tillage systems have been proposed (zero tillage, minimum tillage, among others) to preserve the soil structure in a productive state, reduce erosion and degradation and conserve moisture. The zero tillage or direct seeding, consists of sowing manually or mechanically on the soil that has already been harvested, without making any previous preparation of the soil for planting, this helps to preserve the structure of it.

In this same order of idea, conservation tillage is a system that reduces soil and water losses in relation to conventional tillage, and often corresponds to a form of non-investment tillage, which maintains an adequate amount of residues on the surface, more specifically, conservation tillage can be considered as a tillage system in which crop residues are retained at or near the surface in the soil, in order to control erosion and achieve a good soil-water ratio, in addition to being organic matter to keep the soil biota active.

Looking at the aspects that conservation tillage provides, it consists of carrying out the planting in an integrated way, on the first level it starts with leaving the remains of the previous harvest (stubble) scattered on the surface of the soil, for different purposes, first that it serves as a vegetable cover to reduce the proliferation of weeds and their growth, on a second plane, that the remains of the stubble decomposes with the interaction of the soil biota, the moisture generated by the climate between these and the soil, allowing the remains to decompose, and contribute organic matter to the soil, in turn this covering of harvest remains serves as a protective layer of the soil, raindrops and strong winds.

Of course, conservation tillage has many benefits, but you should be very careful when it comes to management, because it could provide the conditions for unwanted pests and microorganisms to develop and cause problems to the plantation, although this type of coregularity problems does not occur. According to the above, selecting the tillage properly can serve as a transformative axis of the functioning of the agroecosystem by influencing the formation and stability of soil aggregates and the maintenance of organic matter