Why Hillside Farms Produce Different Crop Yields

Hello everyone, I have something to show on about this particular farm. It looks well organised and there's actually a method to how the farmer did that.

When people look at a farm plan on paper, they just treat every piece of land like it is a flat box. But a lot of us have ground that goes up and down. If you really think about it, a hill actually has more soil surface than a flat place, but trying to actually use that extra ground is not easy at all.

I don't know about you but when I think about a hill farm the first thing that comes to mind is the rain. When it does fall the rain runs down the hill. The gravity pulls down on the good soil and the nutrients in it. The water from the rain can run off the soil in the plant beds and collect in the paths. After a while the soil in the plant beds can start to get washed down the hill in the water from the rain. This can cause problems on the bottom of the hill. So the water can collect and turn to thick mud and this can be very difficult to work in.

A slope though can only support so many plants because of the wide soil ridges required and the need for large spaces between each ridge. The water required to grow plants will flow down the slope between the ridges. In some cases the paths down the slope between the ridges can be washed away during periods of heavy rainfall. Wide paths can also be destroyed by heavy rainfall events. You need to be really careful when you're planting on a slope.

So because of the need for all this space for water to run down the slope of land that you have, for every hill acre of land that you have on a slope, you can actually grow less plants and that means less to sell in terms of quantity than you would on a corresponding amount of flat land, because of all the space that is needed between each ridge of soil for the water to run off down the slope of land.

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