Environment and farmer benefit from new cultivation systems
Achieving higher yields while reducing environmental burdening through improved soil management. This is the objective of the scientists of Applied Plant Research who are working on new cultivation systems on sandy soils.
Cultivation systems on sandy soil
The scientists are investigating whether these advantages can be achieved by comparing several cultivations systems on sandy soil. They are studying the effect of non-ploughing and different types of organic manure such as slurry and compost. And they included more cereals and green manure crops in conventional crop rotations.
In doing so they are following up on an earlier study on PPO’s experimental farm ‘Vredepeel’ where scientists tried to drastically reduce nitrate leaching to groundwater in a conventional and in an organic farming system. Measures such as lower fertilisation levels were found to be insufficiently effective in the conventional system: leaching was twice as high as the permitted level of the Nitrate Directive. In addition, lower fertilisation caused yield loss and lower soil fertility levels.
In the organic system it was found to be possible to stay below the permitted levels by reducing fertilisation in combination with more green manure crops.
Societal services
Whether this new approach does indeed result in promising cultivation systems will become clear in the years ahead. Farmers do, e.g., lose income by incorporating more cereals and green manure crops in their crop rotation. Question then is whether a value is attached to the fact that these cultivation systems are providing an extra contribution to societal objectives, such as CO2 storage or reduced leaching. Farmers may possibly be rewarded for such contributions. But if this does not work out, crop yields must increase; this is the only way to make the system economically sustainable as well.
