Pastures fertility

For arable land, plus urea emissions from pasture. Based on total UK fertilizer consumption (Asman, 1992) ° and 0.68 agricultural land area as arable and ungrazed grass (MAFF, 1990). ... 

Dietary additives can affect the microbiota that are associated with the faeces of animals and degradation of the faeces may be impaired because of the influence of the excretory products on insects, microbes and fungi. The microbiota in the soil and waste material may be affected, thus altering the fertility of the pasture and sustainability of other wildlife. These microbiota can be used as dietary ingredients for animals, so inhibition of their production would be an unsatisfactory consequence of dietary additives. ... 

Annual cropping by traditional methods requires more labor, and yields are generally lower. Although animal power can help reduce human labor and provide manure for fertilizer, draught animals must be either fed by some of the crop or pastured, thereby increasing the land area required per person unless yields per unit of land increase accordingly. Average livestock ate one-fourth of the yield in the early nineteenth centuiy. 

Newman Turner (1955) Fertility Pastures. Faber Faber, London. 

By housing cattle overwinter and composting the farmyard manure, the organic farmer has ready access to a balanced fertiliser that can be spread where most required. The grazing animal does not actually import fertility onto the farm but it does recycle nutrients where it grazes and provides a source of manure when housed. This is as true of sheep, pigs and poultry as of cattle. The only problem with outdoor pigs is that they tend to rip up pastures. 

He ZL, Wu J, O Donnell AG, Syers JK (1997) Seasonal responses in microbial biomass carbon, phosphorus and sulphur in soils under pasture. Biol Fertil Soils 24 421 128... 

Bardgett, R.D., T.W. Speir, DJ. Ross, G.W. Yeates, and H.A. Kettles. 1994. Impact of pasture contamination by copper, chromium, and arsenic timber preservative on soil microbial properties and nematodes. Biol. Fertil. Soils 18 71-79. 

SHERLOCK, R.R. and GOH, K.M. (1984). Dynamics of ammonia volatilisation from simulated urine patches and aqueous urea applied to pasture. I. Field experiments. Fertilizer Research 5,181-196. 

Ext. used land covered with vegetation, which is not or only scarcely used and not fertilized Int. used agricultural land that is fertilized strongly, e.g. arable land, pastures, and vineyards Settl. human settlements, e.g. villages, roads, and industrial areas... 

Nitrous oxide is important not only as a greenhouse gas but, as discussed in Chapter 12, as the major natural source of NC/ in the stratosphere, where it is transported due to its long tropospheric lifetime (Crutzen, 1970). The major sources of N20 are nitrification and denitrification in soils and aquatic systems, with smaller amounts directly from anthropogenic processes such as sewage treatment and fossil fuel combustion (e.g., see Delwiche, 1981 Khalil and Rasmussen, 1992 Williams et al., 1992 Nevison et al., 1995, 1996 Prasad, 1994, 1997 Bouwman and Taylor, 1996 and Prasad et al., 1997). The use of fertilizers increases N20 emissions. For pastures at least, soil water content at the time of fertilization appears to be an important factor in determining emissions of N20 (and NO) (Veldkamp et al., 1998). 

Coroneos, C., Hinsinger, P. and Gilkes, R.J. 1996. Granite powder as a source of potassium for plants a glasshouse bioassay comparing two pasture species. Fertilizer Research 45 143-152. 

Adsorption of anions at mineral surfaces is important in soils because of the limit this process imposes on the availability of plant nutrients such as P, S, and Mo which occur naturally as anions and are added in anionic form in fertilizers. Anion adsorption is also relevant in geochemistry, ore processing, and other fields where minerals with high surface areas are brought into contact with aqueous solutions of anions. Selenite and goethite were chosen for this study because in Western Australia a selenium deficiency in pastures has been shown to be related to the incidence of white muscle disease in sheep (3), and according to workers quoted by Rosenfeld and Beath (9) selenium in soils of higher... 

When phosphorus fertilizers are added to soils deficient in available forms of the element, increased crop and pasture yields ordinarily follow. Sometimes the phosphorus concentration in the crop is increased, and this increase may help to prevent phosphorus deficiency in the animals consuming the crop, but this is not always so. Some soils convert phosphorus added in fertilizers to forms that are not available to plants. On these soils, very heavy applications of phosphorus fertilizer may be required. Some plants always contain low concentrations of phosphorus even though phosphorus availability from the soil may be good. See also Fertilizer. 

Copper deficiency occurs in domestic animals grazing on pasture that is low in copper. Remedial measures include the application of fertilizers containing added copper or the use of suitable salt licks. However, human diets are apparently sufficiently diverse that copper deficiency is not likely in man. Instead, there is the risk that the use of copper cooking utensils and water pipes might lead to an excessive uptake. In conditions where body copper levels are undesirably high it may be necessary to restrict the uptake of copper. Because of the insolubility of copper sulphide, potassium sulphide is sometimes taken orally to render dietary copper unavailable. 

Soils/Land surface About 10%—20% of agricultural lands have degraded in many respects (loss of fertility), which has brought a decrease (during the last 50 years) in yield by 18% on cultivated lands and by 4% on pastures. 

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