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Lauwers, L. (2015). Participatory modelling for strategy design on dairy farms (Vol. 5).
Abstract: To comply with complexity in farming and social demands with respect to farming practices, to remain competitive in and resilient to an ever changing decision environment, today’s farm managers need to develop an extensive portfolio of activities, made coherent by an overall strategic vision. This paper focusses on dairy farming, which shows complexity by integrating crop and livestock processes and faces nowadays important challenges from its social and market environment. The aim is twofold: first, what does strategic thinking mean in dairy farming and what kind of strategic decisions are eligible for a sustainable development, second, what kind of methodological framework can be built to support the farmer’s strategic thinking and decision making. The novel strategy exploration implies not only the mere crop-livestock organization alternatives, but also creatively looks for resilience increasing activities that allow for flexible food nonfood substitutions, multiple valorization trajectories and alternative multi-agents arrangements. Concrete examples include agroforestry, alternative nutrient throughputs or composting. The methodological support focusses on four principles: (i) integrative, considering the whole-farm scale, (iii) normative, leading to improved decision making, (iii)participatory, compiling transdisciplinary knowledge and (iv) communicative, using typical farm benchmarking. Findings are brought together from literature, own research experiences on dairy farm management and interaction with stakeholders, amongst other the technical sciences researchers in the MACSUR knowledge hub. No Label
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Topp, C. (2015). Pesticide management in Scottish spring barley – insights from sowing dates (Vol. 5).
Abstract: Better management of pesticides is a potentially important strategy for reducing environmental impact while maintaining yields. Pesticide use is influenced by several drivers, including sowing date, which can directly impact disease burden. Analysis of sowing dates for spring barley was the first stage of this project, which aims to provide insight into areas of farm management which can be optimised to reduce environmental impact. Sowing dates were taken from the Adopt a Crop database, which contains data from 1983 onwards for commercial farms across Scotland. Work was carried out at three levels: national, to provide an overall picture of historical patterns; regional, to highlight differences within Scotland; and case study, to determine whether the national trend was visible in a single region. A general trend towards later sowing of spring barley in Scotland is visible – yet, this pattern is less pronounced in certain regions. Future work must therefore consider what factors have lead to this shift, to more fully understand interactions between sowing date and the environment. No Label
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Lehtonen, H. (2015). Pilot study at North Savo region (Vol. 5).
Abstract: Feed crop cultivation dominates land use in North Savo region where the value of dairy milk and beef production is approx. 70 % of the total value of agricultural production. Grass silage is produced on cultivated grasslands through grass-cereal rotations. There are restricted or no markets for silage. Dairy and beef farms, directly dependent on the quantity and quality of silage, are vulnerable to adverse weather conditions. Long-term viability of farming is dependent on the long-term productivity development of feed crop production, and ability to cope with adverse weather conditions, affecting both quality and quantity of feed. Adaptation challenges include more frequent wet and dry conditions, increased pest and disease pressure, and overwintering problems, affecting quantity and quality of grass and cereals harvests. More frequent wet conditions are combined with larger farm size, higher axle loads of heavy machinery, increased risk of soil compaction, and high timeliness costs due to rapidly deteriorating feed quality if not harvested at the right time. Some solutions impose new investments and high costs. Results from bio-physical modeling show a clear need for new cultivars better suited in future climate. Various other solutions discussed with the farmers and extension specialists include improved maintenance of drainage and soil structure, to be promoted by crop rotation, soil improvements such as liming, as well as better crop protection. However, higher grass yields may be realized without considerably increased inter-annual yield variability. Needed long-term investments may thus lead to increased productivity under favorable market and policy conditions. No Label
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Pohanková, E., Hlavinka, P., Kersebaum, K. C., Dubrovský, M., Fischer, M., Balek, J., et al. (2015). Pilot study: Field crop rotations modeling under present and future conditions in the Czech Republic using HERMES model (Vol. 5).
Abstract: The aim of this study is to compare the water and organic material balance, yields and other aspects estimated within crop rotations by the Hermes crop model for present and future climatic conditions in the Czech Republic. Moreover, this is a pilot study for the complex and continuous crop rotations modeling (using both single crop models and ensembles) in connection with transient climate change scenarios. For this purpose, three locations representing important agricultural regions of the Czech Republic (with different climatic conditions) were selected. The crop rotation (including spring barley, silage maize, winter wheat, winter rape, and winter wheat in the listed order) was simulated from 1981-2080. The period 1981-2010 was covered by measured meteorological data, and the period 2011-2080 was represented by a transient synthetic weather series from the weather generator M&Rfi. The generated data was based on five circulation models representing an ensemble of 18 CMIP3 global circulation models to preserve to a large degree the uncertainty of the original ensemble. Two types of crop management were compared, and the influences of soil quality, increasing atmospheric CO2 and magnitude of adaptation measure (in the form of sowing date changes) were also considered. According to the results, if a “dry” scenario (such as GFCM21) would occur, then all the C3 crops produced in drier regions would be devastated in a significant number of seasons; for example, by the 2070s, up to 19.5%, 21.5% and 47.0% of seasons with winter rape, spring barley and winter wheat, respectively, would have a yield level below 50% of the present yield. Negative impacts are likely even on premium-quality soils regardless of the use of a flexible sowing date and accounting for increasing CO2 concentrations. Moreover, in some cases, the use of catch crops can have negative impacts, exacerbating the soil water deficit for the subsequent crops. This study (submitted to Climate Research journal) will be used as a pilot for subsequent activities. In this area, following calculations (the same set of stations and updated climate scenarios) using growth models ensemble (currently includes 12 modeling approaches) started to estimate uncertainty aspects. Consequently, the analysis within wider range of conditions (across continents) and farming methods will be conducted. No Label
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Powell, J. (2015). Productivity Implications of Extreme Precipitation Events: the case of Dutch Wheat Farmers (Vol. 5).
Abstract: The paper applies a stochastic production frontier model to measure factor productivity and assess the impact of large variations in precipitation on production and the technical efficiency of farms that grow wheat in the Netherlands. A crop level analysis is conducted using an unbalanced panel of 322 farms in 129 regions that grew wheat for at least two years in the period 2002-2013. In general, higher rates of precipitation were found to reduce wheat production. However, those effects were found to be dependent on the type of soil and the month in which the precipitation was realized. Heavy precipitation in December and August were found to decrease efficiency, while increasing efficiency in April. Results show the importance of controlling for local conditions and interaction effects between variables when assessing the implications of extreme weather events. No Label
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