| dc.description.abstract | Gunung Meriah Village, located in Gunung Meriah District, Deli Serdang
Regency, North Sumatra, is one of the villages where most of the people work as
farmers on forest land converted into agricultural land, with the topography of
the area dominated by sloping to steep. The soil in Gunung Meriah Subdistrict is
mostly Ultisol soil type which has the characteristics of less fertile soil and is
prone to erosion. Farmers in Gunung Meriah Village often lose money from their
agricultural products, mostly due to a lack of knowledge about sustainable and
environmentally friendly agricultural cultivation, cultivation techniques that have
not been achieved, plus the land used is forest conversion land with Ultisol,
adding many factors that cause farmers to lose money from their agricultural
products. This study aims to assess soil quality on agricultural land in Gunung
Meriah Village and compare it with primary forest land and secondary forest
land. This research is descriptive exploratory, with a field survey approach, and
supported by soil analysis in the laboratory. The method used in this research is
the free grid survey method with sampling in this study using the Simple Random
Sampling technique, with three composite sample points. Soil samples were taken
at 8 points with a depth of 0-20 cm. The analysis of soil samples carried out is soil
texture, content density, porosity, cation exchange capacity, C-organic, pH, N total, P-available, base saturation, and total microbes. Then proceed to describe
the results of the study by assessing soil quality using the Minimum Data Set
(MDS) method according to Lal, (1994) on each indicator. The results showed
that primary forest land and secondary forest land had a good soil quality index,
while dryland agriculture had a poor soil quality index, and mixed dryland
agriculture had a poor to moderate soil quality index. In dryland agriculture and
mixed dryland agriculture land use types, there are three parameters that have
extreme limiting factors in almost all samples, namely the parameters of cation
exchange capacity (CEC), base saturation (BS), and P-available. The conversion
of forest land into agricultural land in Gunung Meriah Village has caused a
decrease in soil quality in Gunung Meriah Village | en_US |
