Abstract

Fertilization plays an important role in the sustainability of agriculture. It has to be high enough to get optimal yield and quality taking local conditions into consideration. The loss of nutrients and the nuisance for neighboring ecosystems has to be avoided. The first soil inventory in 1991 showed that the supply with phosphorus and potassium on the fields of the experimental station ranged from optimal to very high. Therefore, it was decided to resign of mineral P and K fertilizer to reduce the reserves, only organic manures supplied with P + K. The character and level of nitrogen (N) supply differed greatly at both farms. Since in the organic farming (OF) the use of mineral N fertilization is prohibited, the N supply resulted from farmyard manure and N fixation by legume feeding crops and undersown legumes. In the farm with integrated crop cultivation (ICC) mineral N fertilizers were used in addition to farmyard manure. The soil inventory of 2001 was carried out to determine which changes in soil reserves of the most important nutrients (C, N, P, and K) caused by the changed management systems were observed in both farms. This was of special interest because long-term nutrient balances indicated changes in soil reserves. The soil inventory of 2001 was statistically and geostatistically analyzed to transfer the punctual data to spatial distributions of examined soil properties. The results then were compared with the results of the soil inventory of 1991 and with the nutrient balances given by REPRO.

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