Is the soil in Taiwan healthy? Guo Hongyu sighs: you can't wait for a centimeter of soil in your whole life, so you need to cherish it.

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Is the soil of agricultural land in Taiwan healthy? The answer to this question is to ask Guo Hongyu, a retired researcher at the Agricultural examination Institute who has been engaged in soil investigation for 37 years. Over the past few decades, he has been digging and sampling soil all over Taiwan, and he can be said to be the most familiar with this land. over the years, he has observed that the organic matter in Taiwan's soil has increased as a result of agricultural cultivation, but it has also been acidified and salinized due to excessive fertilization. farmers must learn to rationalize fertilization in order to make land use more sustainable.

In addition, after the opening and free sale of agricultural land, many agricultural areas are full of factories and luxury houses, and in recent years they have been invaded by photovoltaic operators. Kuo Hung-Yu believes that this is a serious harm to the soil. Agriculture is a relatively sustainable way to give consideration to soil ecology and crop production, and to let the soil play its due function and let all things live forever is his greatest wish as a soil surveyor.

Guo Hongyu introduced the large soil profile specimen (Photography / Cai Jiashan) at the entrance of the soil gallery to record the earth's chronicles. People can wait for less than one centimeter of soil in a lifetime.

Taiwan is rich in soil resources, and the global soil classification follows the 12 soil classes of the United States. Kuo Hung-Yu says that Taiwan has 11 of them, except for permafrost. The soil that breeds all things, from its own particle size, electrical conductivity, pH value, water content, composition, and so on, will determine the final growth of crops.

Walking into the soil exhibition hall in Wufeng Agricultural Experimental Institute in Taichung, rows of soil profile samples as high as 1.2 meters are quite attractive. Guo Hongyu said that the history of the land can be seen from the soil profile. For example, the Meinung area of Kaohsiung was often flooded in the past, and the deep and shallow soil layers can be seen from the profile, and it is speculated that there have been at least seven flooding in the past.

Soil formation is not easy. Guo Hongyu takes Penghu as an example. It took 8 million years for Penghu basalt to produce 1.3 meters of soil. "Local residents may not be able to wait for a centimeter of soil for a lifetime."