Sustainable Agriculture Practice: Crop Rotation 11/20/20

In addition to the practices that I have explained to you in my previous blog posts, there

is another way to practice sustainable agriculture. Crop rotation is used widely across the

world. This is because it is an easy way to, yet again, help the crops as well as the producer.

You know how I said that cover crop is exactly what it sounds like? Well, that is the case

with crop rotation as well! Crop rotation means that the field has a different crop planted on it

from growing season to growing season. This method also involves soil nutrients like cover

crops (https://agamerica.com/sustainable-farming-tips/).

Let me give you an example. I explained in my previous blog post that different crops

need certain nutrients to thrive i.e., corn needs nitrogen. So, if a farmer plants corn this

growing season it takes the nitrogen away from the soil. The next growing season the farmer

would want to plant soybeans, wheat, sugar beets, etc. because they don’t need much

nitrogen. This gives the soil time to replenish the nutrients back into the soil before corn is

planted again.

On top of that, crop rotation also helps prevent diseases. This is because plant diseases

tend to target a specific plant. For instance, corn leaf blight affects (yep, you guessed it!) corn.

Corn leaf blight does not affect soybeans. So, if soybeans are planted after corn, the disease has

nothing to prey on and dies. This means that if corn is planted after the soybeans, the disease

will no longer be in that field. This reduces cost for farmers in two ways. The first is because

they are not buying pesticides to kill the disease. The second is because their end result of corn

is much healthier, which in turn leads to more of a profit (https://agamerica.com/sustainable-

farming-tips/).