1.1 Agricultural Land

• Ways of accessing land for agricultural use
• Utility of land for agricultural production
• Natural factors that determine land productivity
• The importance of land in agricultural production
• Physical, chemical and biological properties of soil
• The soil profile and its importance
• Investigating soil properties

• describe ways of accessing land for agricultural use
• evaluate the utility of land for agricultural production purposes
• analyse the natural factors that determine the productivity of land in agriculture
• describe the properties of a soil for crop production
• investigate the properties of soil for crop production
• relate the importance of the soil profile to crop production
• appreciate the importance of land and soil in agricultural production

“How is land productivity determined for agriculture?”

“Why is land put into different agricultural uses?”

“How do the properties of soil influence crop production?”

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1. Agricultural land: access, use and productivity
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   How land is accessed for farming, why different land is put to different uses, and the natural factors that determine how productive it is.
2. The properties of soil
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   The physical, chemical and biological properties of soil that make it good or poor for crops, and what a good crop soil is like.
3. The soil profile, and investigating soil
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   The layers of the soil profile and what they mean for crops, and how to investigate soil properties by simple experiment.
4. Soil horizons and Kenyan soil profiles
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   How to read a soil pit horizon by horizon, how profiles form, and what typical Kenyan profiles mean for crops.
5. Soil texture and the texture triangle
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Sand, silt and clay as particle sizes, how to name a texture class on the triangle, and what Kenyan textures mean on the farm.
6. Soil structure
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   How soil particles clump into peds, which structures suit crops, and how Kenyan farmers build or destroy structure.
7. Porosity and drainage
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Pore space, macropores and micropores, how sand loam and clay drain, and how Kenyan farmers fix waterlogging or drought in the root zone.
8. Soil water
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Gravitational, capillary and hygroscopic water; field capacity and permanent wilting point; and how Kenyan farmers keep available water in the root zone.
9. Soil fertility and land productivity
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Fertility as what the soil can offer, productivity as what the land actually yields, and how Kenyan farmers keep or exhaust the soil.
10. Land classification in Kenya
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Agro-ecological zones and land capability: matching crops, livestock and forest to Kenya's humid highlands, ASALs and coast, and why only about one fifth of the country is high-potential farmland.