Liming
Farming is one of the most important sectors of the Latvian national economy. In recent years, with the intensification of the agricultural production, new soil treatment technologies have been introduced and new, intensive and demanding crop varieties are used. The combination of these activities facilitates increased soil degradation – it reduces the necessary activity of micro-organisms and biological processes in the soil thereby increasing the soil acidification process. The majority of farmers try to compensate the nutritional materials necessary for the crops with artificial mineral fertilisers and micro fertilisers. Yet all this is done solely on the basis of general assumptions without taking into account that also such mineral fertilisers are physiologically acidic and have a negative influence on the biological processes in the soil.