How does using too much chemical fertilizers to increase soil fertility and how can you neutralize the soil when you use excess of fertilizers?
Rk Naresh
In my opinion using too much chemical fertilizer can harm the soil by making it too acidic and killing helpful microbes. To fix soil with too much fertilizer, add lime to reduce the acidity and compost to restore nutrients. Also, using fewer chemicals and switching to organic fertilizers can keep the soil healthy.
Like any chemical additive, fertiliser (especially chemical fertilisers) harm the PH balance and nutrient quality found in the soil. By doing this they also can easily change the delicate balance in all the microbes and bacteria in the soil that is making it healthy and useable.
When this occurs, usually after there is a noticed drop in productivity, there is a tendency to add what is noted as missing in larger than needed quantities. This is also done without a proper soil analysis.
This may have a short-term bonus but a long-term detriment to productivity, as the subsequent year you have another detriment and have to add something to replace what has died in the soil base with another chemical fertiliser but add to it something to neutralise the excess interfering with land and soil capacity caused by the previous year's additions. The essence of what is happening is creating a fishpond with a fish ladder that falls back into itself. No matter how many times you refill the water and re-stock the pond - they are not going to breed and the conditions for natural growth will disappear.
This practice is a classic example of negative replacement therapy where you over-react to the problem, and then next year, you overreact to the new problem while punishing the solution from the previous year. You wouldn't do that to children, to animals or practices, why, when knowing the circle it causes, would you do it farming practices.
Too much use chemical fertilizer to improve soil fertility is an economic waste.
If too much here means dependance or relying on chemical fertilizer within its limits, then that would be a discussion for another day.
However, the excess use of chemical fertilizer has its own demerits and its effect on the soil, depends on the type of fertilizer. Firstly, chemical fertilizer does not improve soil texture (relative particle size) and structure (arrangement of soil particles).
Some nitrogen releasing fertilizer when applied to soils tend to make soils more acidic: e.g. NH4NO3 (Ammonium nitrate); The NH4+ tend to ionise making the H+ / or the H3O+ to be released in the soil hence increasing the positive hydrogen ions (acidity) in the soil. Similarly the (NH4)2SO4 in addition to the H+ would react with the SO2- forming some H2SO4 particles which are highly acidic.
Such type of fertilizer would be suitable in soils (to some extent) requires an increase in soil pH.
Furthermore excess nitrogen would be leached in the soil polluting water bodies (surface and underground). The surface polluted water would encourage the growth of algae etc., which ultimately would reduce the amount of oxygen in water useful for aquatic life...
Other sodium based fertilizers would release Na+ in the soils which when accumulated in large amounts would results in Sodic soils which are not suitable for plant growth (generally). ETC ETC
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