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The “Crop Rotation Practice Standard” for the National Organic Program under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, section §205.205, states that Farmers are required to implement a crop rotation that maintains or builds soil organic matter, works to control pests, manages and conserves nutrients, and protects against erosion.
A set of crops is rotated from one field to another. The technique was first used in China in the Eastern Zhou period, [1] and was adopted in Europe in the medieval period. Three-field system with ridge and furrow fields (furlongs) The three-field system lets farmers plant more crops and therefore increase production.
Crop rotation is a tried-and-true practice that has been used not just in home vegetable gardens but in full-scale farming operations since the 17th century. It consists of moving a family of ...
The first academic description of the Three Sisters cropping system in 1910 reported that the Iroquois preferred to plant the three crops together, since it took less time and effort than planting them individually, and because they believed the plants were "guarded by three inseparable spirits and would not thrive apart". [5]
By affecting the soil in different ways, crops in a rotation help to stabilise changes in the properties. Another consideration is that many agricultural pests are species-specific and so having a given species present in a field only some of the time helps to prevent populations of pests from growing. [6] The organisation of individual plants ...
The Norfolk four-course system is a method of agriculture that involves crop rotation. Unlike earlier methods such as the three-field system, the Norfolk system is marked by an absence of a fallow year. Instead, four different crops are grown in each year of a four-year cycle: wheat, turnips, barley, and clover or ryegrass. [1]
Organic standards require rotation of annual crops, [58] meaning that a single crop cannot be grown in the same location without a different, intervening crop. Organic crop rotations frequently include weed-suppressive cover crops and crops with dissimilar life cycles to discourage weeds associated with a particular crop. [57]
They can plant only the most profitable crop, use the same seed, pest control, machinery, and growing method on their entire farm, which may increase overall farm profitability. Diversity can be added both in time, as with a crop rotation or sequence, or in space, with a polyculture or intercropping (see table below).