Some considerations on the importance of corn cultivation and organic fertilization

Dear readers, the growing need for the supply of agricultural products for food security and transformation into consumer goods by society has generated an immense development of agricultural activities in recent years, which has resulted in the need to implement alternatives that improve crop efficiency, reduce adverse effects on soil and the rate of use of synthetic fertilizers, in order to increase profits per cultivated area. All this as a result of the great demand for raw material for production processes and food supply worldwide.

With reference to the above, the production of the corn crop (Zea Mayz L.), represents a great importance worldwide since, it is the most demanded item to be used mainly as an ingredient for human food, according to Jurado, Aranda, Callejas, and Ortega (2013), an example of this is Mexico, whose population uses the item for the preparation of food products derived from corn, it is also sometimes used as a raw material for animal feed. In the case of Venezuela, corn (Zea Mayz L.), is the most important crop in the vegetable agricultural sector and has been considered a strategic item due to its impact on the daily diet of Venezuelans, for the purposes of this Arrieche and Mora (2005), state that in Venezuela the intense tilling in the preparation of land to grow corn has caused accelerated soil degradation with loss of organic matter and decreased productivity thereof, which has affected the yields of corn cultivation due to low levels of organic matter in the soil.

An alternative management to increase these levels lies in the incorporation of organic residues into the soil, since it can improve its physical, chemical and biological properties, for this reason the applications of organic fertilizers are an efficient strategy to incorporate fundamental elements for soil development, which makes organic amendments of great importance due to the diversity of benefits they provide, since, due to their natural origin they are rich in macro and micro nutrients and contribute to the improvement of soil conditions; avoiding contamination and degradation of it, they also act in the regulation of the bacterial flora of the soil since, from these, the availability of organic matter and usable mycoorganisms for agricultural production is increased.

In other words, organic fertilizers help the development of crops without causing environmental consequences; such as soil, water and the ecosystem, in order to obtain healthy food with an exploitable, productive, efficient and sustainable organic agriculture to meet the needs of corn cultivation. In relation to the latter, organic fertilizers not only bring benefits to crops, soil and vegetable agricultural production, but also producers are widely beneficiaries with the use of these amendments, since they offer great economic profitability with a clean and low cost production, these being originated from renewable natural resources.

Dear readers, after making the previous approaches, from our point of view it is important to carry out tests in the different agroproductive zones of Venezuela to evaluate the productive efficiency of organic fertilizers from different sources and different methods for obtaining suitable products for the fertilization of different crops among which is one of the most important in food as corn, being a flagship item in many nations. With the use of this type of fertilization, some morphological and productive variables of the evaluated crop can be evaluated.