What is Soil Fertility?

Farmers have known for a very long time that certain substances, when added to the soil, improve production. These are now called fertilisers. For reasons of cost and ease of use, chemical fertilisers have replaced natural ones. Although plants can't distinguish the difference, artificial fertilisers can easily be over-used, resulting in damage to the soil, rivers and ocean.

There are no miracle fertilizers, only plain and simple chemical nutrients, that are absolutely essential for plant growth. In moist sand loams plant nutrients are generally more accessible than in silt or clay soils although clay soils contain higher fertility resources. Nutrients became restricted or unavailable, in very wet or very dry soils for obvious physical reasons such as a lack of root absorption by most crop species.