Encouraging soil biological activity - Soil Essentials: Managing Your Farm's Primary Asset - page 71

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Encouraging soil biological activity
Why is soil biological activity important?
Soil is a living entity in its own right, and as such can be in good or poor health. A
healthy soil leads to healthy plants due to better nutrition and reduced risk of
disease, which in turn leads to healthier animals that graze on those plants. A
healthy soil is more productive, which helps improve farm viability. A healthy soil
is also less prone to damage than a soil that is already suffering from some
degradation from poor management.
What is soil biological activity?
Soil biological activity refers to the living aspects of the soil, which includes the
large, small and minute life forms in the soil. These life forms include animals
such as earthworms and springtails, fungi such as the hyphae of mushrooms and
toadstools, actinomycetes and mycorrhizae, and bacteria such as rhizobia.
There are many other animals and micro-organisms that live in the soil and
give the soil its biological diversity, which determines in part how well plants can
grow in it. In a healthy soil there is a balance between these life forms that make
the soil eminently suitable for supporting plant growth.
Undesirable balances are also reached between life forms in a soil that is not so
healthy, which may encourage the increase of pathogenic (disease causing)
organisms. A reduction in the rate of nutrient cycling, from available to
unavailable forms, can also occur.