Paddy soil quality assessment to sustaining food security

Abstract

Soil is a vital non-renewable natural resource for food production. Healthy, nutritious, and good-quality food is only produced through healthy soil. As the essential food commodity in Indonesia, rice is mainly cultivated in heavily degraded paddy soil, characterized by low organic C content and available N, P, and K nutrients. The challenges of increasing food demand due to increasing population, narrow agricultural land, and climate change lead to severe pressure on paddy fields. Monitoring soil quality is necessary to prevent the ongoing degradation of rice fields and threaten food security. This paper is a literature review that reveals the importance of evaluating soil quality and determining the limiting factors so that a soil health-based paddy soil management strategy can be sought to sustain food security.