Humus balances are intended to serve as instruments to support humus management in practice. Still, urgent need for adaptation especially with regard to apllication in organic farming has been stated.
Results presented in this paper show that there in fact is a difference in humus repro-duction between conventional and organic farming that is not recognized in balance methods. In addition, the results exhibit a big uncertainty in balance results. They are pointing out basic problems of humus balance methods that are likely to be caused by an insufficient consideration of site-specific factors of the humus household and their interaction with farming
