The 2017 edition of the ‘Principles of Agricultural Crop Fertilisation in Switzerland’ (‘PRIF’: German abbreviation ‘GRUD’) is available for the first time online as well as in a print version. PRIF now offers fertilisation data for arable, forage and special crops – all combined in a modular publication. The PRIF guidelines (see www.prif.ch) are mainly used by farmers, agricultural advisers, researchers, and policy decision-makers.
Rising temperatures and a decrease in summer precipitation will increase the need for irrigation on Swiss farms in future. This could exacerbate regional water-use conflicts, with e.g. potable-water use being at loggerheads with nature-conservation aims. Model-supported assessments of climate impacts are important to enable the early detection of mismatch risks and to highlight alternatives. It is only in this way that unwise investments and negative environmental impacts can be avoided over the long term.
The soil is one of the most diverse habitats on Earth. Swiss arable and meadow soils teem with living organisms. Thousands of bacteria and up to 200 metres of mycorrhizae can be found in a single gram of soil. Fungi and bacteria in the soil form complex networks. New research findings are now showing that these microbial networks can be promoted and used in a targeted fashion, e.g. to improve the nutrient uptake of plants, or to increase soil fertility.
Consuming less meat and alcohol, eating more plant-based foods such as cereals, potatoes, nuts and fruit, avoiding imported products whose mode of production or transport is particularly polluting, using already-available grassland for milk production and avoiding food loss are strategies with the greatest potential for reducing the environmental impacts of food. At the same time, an environmentally optimised diet of this sort would largely correspond to nutritional recommendations.
