The less intense you manage the soil, the better the soil. Such as not plowing so often or the use of more grass-chic mixtures as cover crops. These are the conclusions of a research team led by the Dutch Institute of Ecology (Nio-Knaw). Surprisingly, it also applies to conventional and organic breeding. These important insights for the placement of agriculture have been published in a scientific journal Science today. “It offers clear evidence to help farmers manage the soils better.”
Sustainable food breeding: What is the best way to do this? This is one of the big challenges: produce enough food without threatening the soil. After all, healthy soil has many functions – called multifunctionality – and for sustainable agriculture this must be preserved.
“Multifunctional soil is crucial for sustainable food production, because plants get food from it,” researchers from university and research and research (Netherlands) and Universität Tübingen (Germany) said. “The soil also plays a necessary role in water storage, facing climate change and the suppression of the disease.”
Organic vs conventional
Research on farms across the Netherlands shows that the intensity of soil tillage is generally determined whether the soil can retain all its functions. Interestingly, the difference between conventional and organic cultivation has a minor influence. In both types of agricultural systems, many variations have been found in soil tillage and management.
“The good news is that in a conventional agriculture, which is the vast majority, there are a lot to get,” the soil ecologist and professor Nioo -a Wim van der Putten said. ‘On all farms, including organic, it is important at this point not to grow the soil too intensely. For example: plowing less. Inverting soil during plowing is a very large disorder for soil life. “
More than plowing less
Not only rarely plowing, but more use of grass and plants from the bean family, such as clover, contributes to multi -purpose healthy soil. You can exchange them with growing cereals such as wheat, barley, piss and rye.
The research team took samples and made measurements on more than 50 Dutch farms on clay and sandy soils. This has always been done in pairs: a farm farm plus an organic adjacent farm. The type of soil and other conditions were very similar at the time. “So we could compare them like twins,” Guusle Koorneef explains. Together with Sophie Van Rijssel, she conducted doctoral research on this topic.
Sustainable and productive
A wide range of soil properties were measured, and farmers divided which agricultural practices were applied. Organic carbon present in the soil has proven to be the best predictor of soil multifunctionality, and for biological indicators it was a bacterial biomass. Koorneef adds: ‘We also looked at the sandy and sea clay soil. These are two very different types of soil in the Netherlands. And we see the same picture in both types of soil. “
‘Popular expression sustainable intensification He is contradictory to our results, ‘he claims that the researcher contributed to Kyle Mason-Jones, who is now working on Universität Tübingen. “Intense soil management leads to a decrease in soil functions and is therefore less sustainable.” Therefore, researchers suggest a new, appropriate goal. ‘Productive de-antennensification. If it is successful, you will get more functions from less intensely grown soil, retaining the yield of crops as much as possible. “
Vital soil
These findings are the final result of a vital soil project. The project was subsidized by Nwo Groen, who coordinated Nioo and implemented it with Wageningen University and research. In addition to scientific partners, several social partners are included: Eurofins-Agro, Bokkerbouw, Open Teelten (earlier PPO-agv) and LTO-NOORD.
Previous studies using satellite images, in the same project, measured the ‘greenery’ crop on the field. This gives us an assessment of the production level. It was shown that the degree of greenery (crop yield) did not suffer from reducing the intensity of the management. Interestingly, organic agriculture could return as productive as well as conventional agriculture for about 17 years after the transition.
Return to the current research. “You do not necessarily have to go through the entire transition to organic agriculture to keep having a positive effect on soil health,” Koorneef says. “I find it really promising that you can strengthen the functioning of the soil on conventional and organic farms by doing it less intensely.”
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