Ley farming is an agricultural system where the field is alternately seeded for grain and left fallow. Other name for the method is "alternate husbandry". In ley farming, the field is alternately used for grain or other cash crops for a number of years and "laid down to ley" i.e. left fallow, used for growing hay or used for pasture for another number of years. After that period it is again ploughed and used for cash crops.

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  • Ley farming is an agricultural system where the field is alternately seeded for grain and left fallow. Other name for the method is "alternate husbandry". In ley farming, the field is alternately used for grain or other cash crops for a number of years and "laid down to ley" i.e. left fallow, used for growing hay or used for pasture for another number of years. After that period it is again ploughed and used for cash crops. During the fallow/pasture period the soil is filled with roots of grasses and other plants. New ploughing mixes them with the soil and also increases the amount of nitrogen in the ground, removing need of artificial nitrogen fertilizers. It also disturbs the life cycle of pests. Crop-fallow was the dominant wheat system in many semiarid regions by the 1940s. Unfortunately, prolonged use of crop-fallow created economic and environmental problems. Ley farming was developed as an alternative to crop-fallow in Australia. Cereal grain crops and legume pasture are rotated in ley farming, thereby allowing the integration of crop and livestock enterprises into a flexible and diversified production system. Legume pasture initially is established mechanically, but thereafter it regenerates naturally from the soil seed bank with only a periodic need to be reinvigorated. The pasture phase provides a break in pest cycles and also reduces N fertilizer needs of the subsequent cereal grain crop because of the N fixing ability of the legume species. Ley farming was practiced on more than 50 million acres (200,000 km) in the “wheat-sheep” zone of southern Australia by the 1980s. On average, wheat yields increased by 48% and grain protein concentration by 2% following the replacement of crop-fallow with ley farming. Improvements in soil physical properties and reductions in soil erosion also were observed. The potential of ley farming to improve the economics of dryland wheat production in the Great Plains of North America was recognized in the late 1960s by Jim Sims at Montana State University. A project was initiated to determine if ley farming could be adopted in the Northern Great Plains. Unfortunately, funding reductions and other developments resulted in the project being discontinued.
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  • Ley farming is an agricultural system where the field is alternately seeded for grain and left fallow. Other name for the method is "alternate husbandry". In ley farming, the field is alternately used for grain or other cash crops for a number of years and "laid down to ley" i.e. left fallow, used for growing hay or used for pasture for another number of years. After that period it is again ploughed and used for cash crops.
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  • Ley farming
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