Soil Nutrient Budgets and Flows in Smallholder Farming System of Ethiopia: Review

Abstract

Primary nutrients like N, P and K are common for crop production in smallholder farms in Ethiopia. Nutrient budgets and flows in most farming systems play a crucial role in agricultural production and may lead to either depletion or accumulation of nutrients. This review showed trends of nutrient flows and balances in a farming systems as a result of different deriving forces, differences in farming systems, variability in soil fertility and management strategies. The review highlights the potential sources of nutrients and balance approaches as an indicator of soil nutrient mining in smallholder farming systems in the country. There is insufficient awareness on the levels of nutrient depletion in Ethiopia due to limited research conducted related nutrient mining and depletion even though there are different assessments made by different authors at small holder levels.

Keywords: Soil nutrient budget, Soil fertility, nutrient replenishment, crop production

DOI: 10.7176/JBAH/11-14-02

Publication date:July 31^st 2021