• Maize was the most productive crop with a total energy production 42.6% and 52.7% higher than wheat and soybean, respectively.

• Cultivation is defined by the Oxford English dictionary as the tilling of land, the raising of a crop by tillage.

• The crop microbial ecosystem can thus be energized in sustainable agriculture with considerable ecological stability and environmental quality.

• The first 50 years was the start of the conservation tillage (CT) movement and, today, a large percentage of agricultural land is cropped using these principles.

• The majority of households in southern Malawi subsist on less than 1 ha and more than 90% of the land is cropped with the staple crop maize.

• In the absence of plant inputs the size of the microbial population measured by a variety of methods was, as expected, far smaller than in adjacent cropped soil.