Explanation of soil

Before any citations about soil fertility and productivity, it is very important to understand the complete meaning of soil.

Generally, different concepts exist concerning soil. To a mining engineer, the soil is the debris covering the rock or mineral. To a highway engineer, the soil maybe looked upon as the material in which roads are built or to be built upon. To an average house owner, it is good if the soil is a loamy type so that he can make his seedbeds for flower garden and he can as well differentiate little among variation in the soil.

To a farmer, soil is a habitat for the roots of plant. He makes a living from the soil and therefore he is much concern with soil than anybody else. To the primitive man, the soil is a very concrete thing which is the dirt on the surface of the earth. To a soil scientist or a Pedologist, the word soil conveys a somewhat different meaning.

Soil is the more or less loose and friable material in which plants by means of their root may or do find a foot hold and nourishment as well as other conditions for the plant growth. This is one of the many definitions that consider soil primarily as a means of plant production. It is the upper weathering layer of the solid earth crust. This part is scientific in the sense that no reference is made to crop production or to any other utilitarian motive.

Therefore, soil can then be explained as more concisely as the collection of natural bodies, synthesized in profile form from a variable mixture of broken and weathered mineral and decaying organic matter which covers the earth in a thin layer and which supplies, when containing the proper amounts of the air and water, the mechanical support and imparts sustenance for plants. Soils have properties due to integrated effects of climate and living organisms acting upon parent materials as conditioned by relief over a period of time.