Soil Issues and Challenges

Abstract

Soils impact our daily lives in many ways and in many uses. And it is because of these many ways and many uses that we are faced with soil issues and challenges which can only be properly addressed in terms of what is the best of the options. So this chapter culls out a sample soil series from a lowland, upland, or highland soils in Chaps. 2, 3, or 4 and pairs with a specific topic on the economic use of soils discussed in Chap. 5. Quite repetitive, but unless we view the soil in its landscape setting and reinforce the best scientific approach to the issue, we sometimes fail to realize that the most logical response was already tackled in previous chapters and the basic principles taught as early as during elementary education. We should realize and understand that true science works in harmony with nature. This chapter looks into land use competition, land use conversion, climate change and carbon sequestration, corporate farming and monoculture, research direction, and researchable areas for rice soils, flooding, and soil renewal, land degradation, soil productivity enhancement, soil pollution, the role of soil ecology in development planning in the Philippine context, how our industrial crops can compete in a global trading scenario where trade barriers and other protective mechanisms are being removed, and the problems associated when we open for economic use a mangrove area with acid sulfate properties. Repetition reinforces knowledge and understanding and shows how this book could be useful not only to soil surveyors but also to those who have interest and stake in soil resources management given a specific local condition. Finally, we sum up the whole book which started with the geological history of the country that defined the properties of its soils, and with the history of the Philippines that defined its agricultural geography, the two forces that catapulted us to where our agriculture is now. We close the Soils of the Philippines with the Filipino folk song that sums up the centuries of agricultural wisdom and the agricultural heritage of our forebears; the folk song is about crop diversification and multiple cropping in a backyard home gardening setting that reinforces the concept of food sovereignty.