Assessing soil structure in organically farmed soils

Summary

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Soil structure was assessed in over 90 fields (organic and conventionally farmed) covering mixed, stockless and pasture farming systems. A combination of spade and an objective scoring system based on the degree of aggregation and porosity was able to detect differences between fields. On average, in the fields sampled, topsoil structure was slightly better on the organic farms though, even on the conventional fields, structure was unlikely to limit crop growth.