Soil Building Blocks
This abbreviation stands for soil organic matter.
SOM
These familiar soil animals create burrows that improve aeration, infiltration, and pore space.
Earthworms
This farming system relies heavily on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Chemical Farming. Will also accept industrial or conventional?
Water that flows across the land rather than soaking into the soil is called this.
Runoff
This plant family is preferred for many green manures because its members can add nitrogen.
Legumes
This dark, stable component of soil organic matter stores nutrients and can hold many times its weight in water.
Humus
This living network of soil organisms decomposes matter and cycles nutrients.
Soil food web
Shiva compares agricultural chemical overuse to overusing this type of human medicine.
Antibiotics
This process occurs when water enters the soil.
Infiltration
This amendment adds organic matter and beneficial organisms, improves soil structure, and can suppress pathogens.
Compost
Name the two overlapping fractions of soil organic matter.
Labile and non-labile fractions
This microbe-rich zone immediately surrounds plant roots and is fed by root exudates.
Rhizosphere
Excess nitrogen and phosphorus can cause algal blooms and oxygen-depleted waters through this process.
Eutrophication
This practice covers soil, reduces evaporation, slows runoff, and feeds soil organisms.
Mulching
These crops are planted primarily to protect soil, add organic matter, and improve fertility.
Green manures or cover crops
These crumb-like soil aggregates create pore space for air, water, organisms, and roots.
Peds
These symbiotic fungi exchange minerals for plant sugars and are especially important for phosphorus uptake.
VAM fungi
What served as the control in the Navdanya farm comparison?
Barren, uncropped land
Shiva uses this metaphor for organic-matter-rich soil that captures and stores rain.
Soil as a water reservoir
This irrigation method allows one furrow to serve crop rows on both sides.
Paired-row irrigation
Name the three main soil horizons in order from the surface downward.
A, B, and C horizons
Which organisms generally dominate agricultural soils, and which dominate productive forest soils?
Bacteria in farms; fungi in forests
Shiva argues that industrial agriculture’s claim of efficiency relies on this narrow measure rather than total food, nutrition, and ecological costs.
Single-commodity yield
Trees, cover crops, and organic-matter-rich soils help infiltrated water replenish aquifers through this process.
Groundwater recharge
This regenerative practice intentionally combines trees or other woody perennials with crops or livestock on the same land.
Agroforestry