The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant by showing what the future of farming could look like.
The loss of soil due to deforestation, overgrazing of animals, and high levels of soil tillage became so bad as to now have been considered the worst case of soil erosion on the planet: over 380,000,000 tons of soil are estimated to be lost per year (or 15 tons per hectare per year...
To a townie, some of it seems extraordinarily simple: a hectare of irrigated ryegrass, for example, needs around a quarter of a tonne of nitrogen fertiliser every year, while lucerne needs none. There’s a growing pool of livestock genetics on tap to breed animals, especially cows, that pro...
It is well established,that different crops need rather different quantities of water to pro-duce a yield.Rice,e.g.is a very water intensive crop,using twice as much water per hectare as wheat(FAO 200 1).When farmers decide to switch from rice cultivation to any so called upland crop,thi...