Soil Essentials: Managing Your Farm's Primary Asset

Soil Essentials is a practical reference for farmers and land managers covering soil issues commonly encountered at the farm level. Written in a straightforward style, it explains the principles of soil management and the interpretation of soil tests, and how to use this information to address long-term soil and enterprise viability.

This book demonstrates how minerals, trace elements, organic matter, soil organisms and fertilizers affect soil, plant and animal health. It shows how to recognise soil decline, and how to repair soils affected by nutrient imbalances, depleted soil microbiology, soil erosion, compaction, structural decline, soil sodicity and salinity. The major problem soils – sodic soils, light sandy soils, heavy clay soils and acid sulphate soils – are all examined.

With this information, farmers and land managers will be able to consider the costs and financial benefits of good soil management.

Soil Essentials is a practical reference for farmers and land managers covering soil issues commonly encountered at the farm level. Written in a straightforward style, it explains the principles of soil management and the interpretation of soil tests, and how to use this information to address long-term soil and enterprise viability.

This book demonstrates how minerals, trace elements, organic matter, soil organisms and fertilizers affect soil, plant and animal health. It shows how to recognise soil decline, and how to repair soils affected by nutrient imbalances, depleted soil microbiology, soil erosion, compaction, structural decline, soil sodicity and salinity. The major problem soils – sodic soils, light sandy soils, heavy clay soils and acid sulphate soils – are all examined.

With this information, farmers and land managers will be able to consider the costs and financial benefits of good soil management.

Roger Hall trained in farm management at Dookie College, then spent a number of years working on farms in Victoria and the NSW Riverina. He has worked with the Victorian Soil Conservation Authority, the Rutherglen Research Institute and at Dookie College as a soil conservation instructor. One of his many achievements has been a major study on soil management in the Murray-Darling Basin funded by the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. He now works as a private consultant conducting soil investigations as well as running his own farm, which includes horticultural production of tree seedlings and vegetables.