Ley farming is a traditional method of farming practiced in England and India in which grasses are
alternately grown with food grains on a piece of land. Find out the general benefits of Ley Farming.
Answers
LEY farming is a system in which grasses and legumes are cultivated in proper rotation for hay, silage and pasture to meet maximum livestock needs and improve and conserve soil fertility.
Leys are temporary, short-term (two to five years) especially sown pastures comprising grasses and legumes. They are used for grazing in succession of ploughs and the land is ploughed again after a predetermined period. It is a dynamic and integral system of agriculture which encompasses soil, plants and livestock together. In this system emphasis is placed on the value of grass-legume mixture to get fodder for livestock and improve soil fertility for obtaining higher yields of arable crops.
For maximum crop yield, the best use of available land has to be made and the latest methods of crop husbandry are put into practice. But this depends on the availability of scientific information on different aspects of agriculture in an easy applicable form.
Farmers have recognised that yields of arable crops are the highest after ploughing up of old grasslands. They tend to decrease with successive crops. In primitive agriculture when the land was in abundance, the cultivated fields were abandoned when yields started to decline, and new fields were taken over for cultivation.