Soil Health and Sustainable Growth in Agriculture

This chapter deals with the problems of soil degradation due to intensive cultivation, excessive use of chemical inputs and lack of soil treatment measures. There are externality problems in land use. The market distortions are also created by support measures of the government. A theoretical model has been developed to show that if the depletion rate of soil nutrients exceeds the rate of their natural regeneration, there will be degradation of land with the result that agricultural growth will become unsustainable. If the stock of soil fertility falls below certain threshold level, the resource will collapse and land will turn into barren fields. However, longer fallow period, use of organic and green manures and crop rotation may be helpful for maintaining soil health. Since the conservation of soil protects the ecology and renders environmental services to the society, public intervention is necessary and it can help soil conservation by encouraging resource friendly inputs and discouraging the polluting inputs through taxes and subsidies. A theoretical model has been constructed to show that if public support measures encourage the use of organic manures, the range of resilience of the resource will increase. At the optimal level, it can totally avoid the problem of soil degradation and ensure a sustainable growth in agriculture. The simulation results confirm this hypothesis and show that growth rate of output in agriculture will increase with increase in use of organic manures.