You can’t really grow the same crop in the same field season after season (without fertiliser), because they’ll sap the specific nutrients they need from the soil. If you do that over and over eventually the soil wont have any food for that crop. Growing something different each season that takes different nutrients from the soil lets it recover the other ones. I don’t know how it recovers on its own, circle of life stuff probably. Modern farming can cheat by artificially replenishing the nutrients with fertiliser.
The problem is that even with crop rotation much of our soil is still nearly depleted. Most farmers aren’t doing enough varied rotation or rest cycles or regenerative farming since anything other than the same 2-3 crops isn’t profitable for them
You can’t really grow the same crop in the same field season after season (without fertiliser), because they’ll sap the specific nutrients they need from the soil. If you do that over and over eventually the soil wont have any food for that crop. Growing something different each season that takes different nutrients from the soil lets it recover the other ones. I don’t know how it recovers on its own, circle of life stuff probably. Modern farming can cheat by artificially replenishing the nutrients with fertiliser.
It also makes it stronger against disease.
The problem is that even with crop rotation much of our soil is still nearly depleted. Most farmers aren’t doing enough varied rotation or rest cycles or regenerative farming since anything other than the same 2-3 crops isn’t profitable for them