Soil health is vital to produce good and healthy crops. The ancient way of protecting soil was through rotating the crops grown on specific pieces of land and leaving land fallow to maintain soil health. Historically, growing the same crop in the same field over multiple harvests damaged soil health by removing nutrients and increasing susceptibility to pests and weeds.
This method is no longer used in modern days, as other methods have been developed which offer increased production without the need to change the type of crop grown or leaving land fallow.
However, recent studies have shown that some of these modern methods, such as fertilisers and other treatments, can have an impact on soil health over time. It is believed that, in order to protect the good biodiversity of topsoil in the UK, different methods of sustainable farming will have to be undertaken in the long term. In the short term, however, other methods are being tried out, such as heat sterilisation.
A benefit of heat soil sterilisation is that it provides a source of relief for soil from harmful substances and/or organisms, as well as killing weeds, and increasing overall crop yield potential. This guarantees that the fresh produce we can purchase from grocery stores can continue to be of good quality.
M&P Engineering is a leading manufacturer and supplier of food processing equipment. We mostly focus on equipment for processing fresh produce.
M&P Engineering’s Large Onion Peeling machine uses self-adjusting floating knives to top, tail and peel onions of 45mm to 115mm diameter. The machine is easy to operate due to the simplistic mechanism and design and thanks to the dry peeling process the product remains in pristine condition once it has been peeled. See it in action here.
M&P Engineering also offers a wide range of food processing machinery in addition to onion peeling machines, including our Carousel Grid Cutting machine, our Radish Top & Tailer, and food depositors and fillers.
If you would like to learn more about M&P’s food processing equipment, get in touch by calling us on 0161 872 8378 or contact us here.