Husbandry is described as a process or act of putting land into different or particular utilization, such as crop husbandry, animal husbandry, and land husbandry. For example, cropping husbandry is characterized by annual, biennial, and perennial crop production.
This could involve arable crop production like maize and rice under annual crop husbandry or tree crop production like rubber and oil palm under perennial crop husbandry.
This article explains the concept, characteristics, principles, and sequential approaches to husbandry for agricultural sustainability.
Concept of Land Husbandry in Agricultural Systems
Good land husbandry is the active process of implementing and managing preferred systems of land use and production to increase or at worst, maintain productivity, stability, or usefulness for the chosen purpose.
In particular situations, existing uses or management may need to be changed to halt rapid degradation and return the land to a condition where good husbandry can have the fullest effect.
The concept of husbandry is widely understood when applied to crops and animals. As a concept signifying active understanding, management, and improvement, it is equally applicable to land.
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Characteristics of Husbandry in Agricultural Practices
Husbandry is characterized by crop husbandry, animal husbandry, and land husbandry, all implying the following: understanding the characteristics, potentials, and limitations of different types of plants, animals, and land.
Predicting the likely positive or negative effects on their productivity resulting from a given change in management or severe but rare events, such as disease or heavy rainfall; working out how they can be strengthened to resist negative effects of such events.
Adopting systems of management that maintain their productivity and usefulness; improving their productivity in terms of quality and quantity of output in a given time; and recognizing the active and central role of farmers as stewards of the land.
Principles of Husbandry for Soil and Water Conservation
Effective action to prevent or control soil erosion and water runoff is generally not an integral part of people’s use and management of land. The seriousness of erosion and runoff problems is growing, affecting the livelihoods of an increasing number of small farmers struggling for subsistence.
Both also diminish the profitability of other rural land uses, including forestry and animal production. Because most countries have little or no reserve of unused, good land, more marginal land, especially steep and semiarid areas, is being brought into cultivation.
If the methods of managing this land do not prevent its degradation, its use will not be sustainable. Other land will continue to be brought into production to compensate for the loss of productivity on already cultivated land.
Erosion and runoff also increase costs to urban communities, requiring repairs to damaged roads and bridges, impeding river navigation due to sandbanks and diminished stream flow, necessitating additional water treatment, reducing agricultural outputs on eroded land, and requiring flood mitigation measures.
Sequential Approaches to Land Husbandry in Agriculture
The following is a sequence for addressing land husbandry:
Managing Rainfall and Runoff in Agricultural Fields
The two main processes of water erosion are detachment of soil by raindrop splash and transportation by surface runoff. The primary control elements are maintaining cover to reduce soil splash and maximizing infiltration to reduce the volume and velocity of surface runoff.
Where runoff is unavoidable, additional control measures are needed. Where practical, encouraging surface retention storage allows water to soak into the soil after rainfall ends.
Minimizing the erosive energy of unavoidable runoff by keeping it dispersed, shallow, and slow-flowing limits its damage as it flows downhill. Uncontrolled runoff is water that might otherwise be put to good use.
Improving Soil Cover for Erosion Control
Raindrops compact and seal the top few millimeters of the soil surface, especially when large and with high kinetic energy. Cover over the soil dissipates the erosive energy of raindrops by breaking them into smaller droplets, insufficient to splash soil particles or compact the surface.
Without cover, valuable clay and organic materials are moved further by splash and runoff, impoverishing the remaining soil. With about 40 percent of the soil surface protected by low-level (not more than one meter above the surface) and evenly distributed cover, splash erosion may be reduced by up to 90 percent.
The leaf canopy of well-grown crops provides effective cover during growth. Faster development of vegetative cover protects bare soil patches sooner, reducing the erosive effects of seasonal rainfall.
Farmers’ management decisions and skills influence this effect. Crop residues left after harvest, or well-managed pastures or forests, protect soil against rainfall impact, slow runoff velocity, and provide organic materials that benefit root growth and soil structure, enhancing the soil’s self-recuperating capacity, internal aeration, drainage, nutrient availability, and moisture storage.
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Enhancing Soil Structure and Rooting Conditions
Surface soil can be pulverized and compacted by frequent animal or machinery passage and severe tillage. Pulverized soil is highly erodible with low infiltration rates; compacted soil has lower permeability.
Repeated cultivations to the same depth may cause a “pan” or layer of induced compaction at the bottom of the tilled layer. The “plow pan” from repeated plowing with tractor- or ox-drawn equipment is well-known, but repeated hand cultivation with a hoe can produce the same effect.
Such a pan results in low percolation rates and limits soil volume for root growth and moisture storage. Some soils have naturally occurring dense layers, like laterite or calcrete, with similar effects.
Compacted soils have reduced aeration, and much soil moisture is held at tensions unavailable to plant roots, potentially obstructing root penetration. Where infiltration rates are lower than rainfall rates, excess water accumulates as potential runoff once surface layers are saturated.
Sealing and compaction by large raindrops can occur in minutes, while damage from animal or vehicular traffic may develop over a few seasons. Naturally occurring pans take centuries or millennia to form. In poorly managed soils, all three types of damage may occur simultaneously.
Promoting Even Rainfall Infiltration
Plant roots spread evenly through upper soil layers, so rainwater should infiltrate uniformly across the soil surface. Maintaining infiltration capacity with good soil structure and keeping the soil surface rough through appropriate tillage or ridging minimizes runoff volume and velocity.
Increasing Soil Moisture for Crop Growth
Roots require freely available soil moisture for growth. Longer moisture availability reduces plant moisture stress. Greater depth of available soil moisture and air allows roots to explore more soil volume, reducing the frequency of moisture limitations.
Soil conservation practices often yield benefits tied to water conservation and improved moisture availability rather than soil or nutrient savings.
Where soil conservation acts as water conservation, simpler or less expensive methods, like retaining crop residues, may be more effective than building banks. Contoured ridge-and-furrow systems may be more appropriate than bench terracing.
Enhancing Organic Activity in Soil Management
Organic materials and processes are critical for forming, improving, and maintaining soil structure, essential for optimal root growth conditions. Well-planned rotational agriculture and mixed cropping restore organic materials and promote organic activity in one period of a rotation that may have declined during an earlier period.
This article explained the concept of husbandry, its characteristics, principles, and sequential approaches for agricultural sustainability.
The concept of husbandry is widely understood in crop and animal production. As a concept signifying active understanding, management, and improvement, it is equally applicable to land.
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