Impacts of Farming Layer Constructions on Cultivated Land Quality under the Cultivated Land Balance Policy

Long Kang,Qin Huang,Rui Zhao,Kening Wu,Sicheng Zhang

doi:10.3390/agronomy11122403

Abstract

Cultivated Land Balance Policy (CLBP) has led to the “better land occupied and worse land supplemented” program. At the same time, the current field-scale cultivated land quality (CLQ) evaluation cannot meet the work requirements of the CLBP. To this end, this study selected 24 newly added farmland in Fuping County and performed eight different high quality farming layer construction experiments to improve the CLQ. A new comprehensive model was constructed on a field scale to evaluate the CLQ using different tests from multi-dimensional perspectives of soil fertility, engineering, environment, and ecology, and to determine the best test mode. The results showed that after the test, around 62% of the cultivated land improved by one level, and the average cultivated land quality level and quality index of the test area increased by 0.63 and 30.63, respectively. The treatment of “woody peat + rotten crop straw + biostimulation regulator II + conventional fertilization” had the best effect on the improvement of organic matter, soil aggregates, and soil microbial activity, and was the best treatment method. In general, application of soil amendments, such as woody peat when constructing high quality farmland, could quickly improve CLQ, and field-scale CLQ evaluation model constructed from a multi-dimensional perspective could accurately assess the true quality of farmland and allow managers to improve and manage arable land resources under CLBP.

Highlights

Cultivated Land Balance Policy (CLBP) is a basic cultivated land protection policy established by China to maintain the dynamic balance of the total cultivated land [1], and is one of the core systems established by the “Land Management Law” [2]
The quality of 10,547.61 m2 of cultivated land in the test area did not change after the different experimental treatments, its index significantly increased, which meant that the cultivated land quality (CLQ) improved in the test area after the experiment
The CLQ index was based on four quality dimensions, which were combined with the results from a land consolidation and development project and an experiment that investigated the characteristics of different high-quality farming layers

Summary

Introduction

Cultivated Land Balance Policy (CLBP) is a basic cultivated land protection policy established by China to maintain the dynamic balance of the total cultivated land [1], and is one of the core systems established by the “Land Management Law” [2]. In a previous study, Bing et al revealed the main influencing factors that require long cultivation time by studying the characteristics of long-term cultivated high quality farming layers, and proposed the principle of rapid construction of high quality farming layers [6,8], i.e., soil organic matter-soil aggregates-synergistic mechanism of biological activity

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion