Agricultural Practices: What Comes After Soil Preparation?

Agriculture involves several steps that farmers follow in a sequence to grow crops successfully. These steps include preparation of soil, sowing, adding manure and fertilizers, irrigation, protection from weeds and pests, harvesting, and storage.

Let's look at the stages and see what follows soil preparation:

• Preparation of soil: This is the first step where the soil is made ready for growing crops. It involves ploughing (loosening and turning the soil) and levelling (making the soil surface even). Preparing the soil is important because it allows roots to penetrate deep, helps in the growth of microbes, and makes nutrient uptake easier.
• Sowing: After the soil is prepared, the next crucial step is placing the seeds in the soil. This process is known as sowing. Seeds are sown either manually by hand (broadcasting) or using seed drills. It's important to sow seeds at the correct depth and spacing.

Considering the typical sequence of agricultural practices, sowing is the operation that is performed immediately after the soil has been prepared.

Let's consider the other options:

• Irrigation: This is the supply of water to crops at different intervals. Irrigation is needed at various stages of crop growth, often after sowing to help seeds germinate, and throughout the growing period, but it is not the direct step that follows soil preparation before placing seeds.
• Spraying pesticides and insecticides: These chemicals are used to protect crops from pests and insects. This practice is done when the crop is growing and faces threats from pests, much later than the soil preparation stage.
• Adding manure and fertilizer: Manure and fertilizers are added to the soil to replenish nutrients. While some fertilizers (basal dose) and manure can be added to the soil during or just before the preparation stage or before sowing, adding them is primarily for soil enrichment, and the direct act of putting the crop material (seeds) into the soil after preparation is sowing. Often, top-dressing with fertilizers happens during crop growth.

Therefore, the agricultural practice that follows the preparation of the soil is sowing.