Exploitation of Soil

Question 1

What is soil and what does it enable to do?

Answer 1

soil is an essential natural resource that enables plants to grow, provides homes for most of the organisms on the earth, holds and cleans water and is used for constructing buildings and roads. It is a non-renewable resource

Question 2

What is farming? How is soil exploited correctly?

Answer 2

farming is the business of growing crops or raising livestock. For the soil to be exploited correctly, the farming methods used must be sustainable.

Question 3

What does fertile soil lead to? how is the level of fertility of soil increased?

Answer 3

The more fertile the soil, the more crops they can grow, or the better the grass will be to feed livestock. Farmers will fertilise it regularly.

Question 4

What is fertilisation? What two things can fertilisers be?

Answer 4

Fertilisation is the adding of sustainable substances to the soil to improve its fertility. Fertilisers can be natural or artificial.

Question 5

differences between natural and artificial fertilisers

Answer 5

Natural: They are called organic fertilisers, they are naturally created e.g. compost and manure.
Artificial: They called synthetic/chemical fertilisers. They are man-made or inorganic compounds.

Question 6

What can pose a threat to the soil?

Answer 6

Fertilising land can pose a threat to soil if done incorrectly.

Question 7

Why must fertiliser be spread at a certain time of year?

Answer 7

Soil can only absorb a certain amount of fertiliser. the spreading of manure on land must be done in the middle of October so the excess manure can be washed away in nearby rivers due to increased rainfall.

Question 8

how does overfertilization occur?

Answer 8

The nutrients supplied by artificial fertilisers don’t stay in the soil for very long while natural fertilisers release their nutrients very slowly. Farmers must apply artificial fertilisers to their soil more often than organic fertilisers.
As the nutrients are naturally available in the soil, there is a danger of over fertilisation, which can kill crops.

Question 9

List two ways of sustainable management of farm soil and explain them.

Answer 9

1. Crop rotation:
   The same crop is not grown in the same field for 2 years in a row. Different crops are rotated from field to field each year so the soil doesn’t become depleted of nutrients and is given a chance to recover.
2. Proper care of soil:
   Farmers often used herbicides and pesticides to protect their land from weeds and harmful insects.
   They must only spread at assigned times during the year and in the correct amount to reduce the potential for soil contamination.