This factsheet introduces soil fertility and health, explains how the holistic organic farming approach improves soil fertility, provides some practices which contribute to improving soil health and help meet the nutrient requirement of crops, animals and humans. The information is based on long-term experiments and on-farm research conducted in the scope of three projects across different countries in Africa, as well as Bolivia and India.
The products are intended for use by African farmers, advisors, teachers and students.

Crop losses from pests threaten global food security and safety. In the last six decades, pest control using chemical pesticides has resulted in important yield gains per unit area, worldwide. However, the long-term sustainability of chemical pest control has been increasingly thrown into doubt due to the negative impact on human health, biodiversity, and the environment.

In protected vegetable systems of the Mediterranean area, rotations are based on a limited number of species and botanical families. In the long term, this favours the development of soil pests and diseases.

Controversy has long surrounded the question of nutritional differences between crops grown organically or using now-conventional methods, with studies dating back to the 1940s showing that farming methods can affect the nutrient density of crops. More recent studies have shown how reliance on tillage and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers influence soil life, and thereby soil health, in ways that can reduce mineral micronutrient uptake by and phytochemical production in crops.

Cover crops (CCs) are a promising and sustainable agronomic practice to ameliorate soil health and crop performances. However, the complex of relationships between CCs, the soil, and the plant nutritional status has been little investigated. In this article, for the first time, we critically review, under a holistic approach, the reciprocal relationships between CCs and the soil physical and hydraulic properties, microbial, and faunal communities, soil nutrient availability, and plant nutritional status in temperate climates.