I propose following actions should be taken on agricultural soil:
1. First of all, ploughing should be deep.
2. An additional device should be installed behind tractor wheels to loosen the soil after the tractors compress it when they ride on agricultural soil to sow or fertilize crops.
3. Small impermeable constructions should be built in draining ditches. These constructions should also have an opening allowing for the regulation of water levels in the ditches. I have built a number of similar constructions in 2010 and they are functioning perfectly even today.

kanal opatrenie

Seriousness of the issue is well documented by numbers, too. In Slovakia, the country in the heart of Europe with the area of 49,036 km2 and the population of 5 million, there are 6,000 km of draining ditches. That is almost the length of the Great Wall of China, which is 6,700 km long. If we retained 2 m3 of water on average in each regular meter of ditches, the partially filled ditches would increase the groundwater levels in the surrounding fields.

PProvided that groundwater levels rise by 1,3 m as far as 500 metres on both sides of the ditch and provided that 1 m3 of soil absorbs 350 litres of water on average in its pores, the total volume of water retained in the ditches and soil could be as large as 2,742 mil m3, i.e. almost 3 mil. cubic meters of water. This can be compared to one tenth of the capacity of Hoover Dam in the United States, the largest dam in the world. All this at the minimum costs...

Water retained in such way is priceless for the landscape as the system of regulation of water levels in ditches and canals allows us to:
- slow down groundwater discharge;
- regulate groundwater levels in the surrounding fields;
- protect areas from floods and droughts;
- improve hydrological regimes on plains;
- renew biodiversity and climate stability.
Moreover, it would also contribute to a more stable occurrence of precipitation events.

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