Posted 7/30/2006 10:19 (#31138 - in reply to #30886) Subject: RE: biological vs chemical view of soil fertility
Pat,
A number of years back, Dwayne Beck proposed that with no-till and good crop diversity, we should be moving toward thinking about soil fertility as a biologically mediated process, rather than a simple chemical extraction of X correlating to crop response. It is a good way to think about it, and has some merit even in tillage systems. What the microbes are doing can easily 'swamp' whatever management is trying to do.