The use of fertilisers and plant protection products helps to safeguard or improve yields and product quality but may have a negative impact on the environment. Tillage affects not only soil quality, but also erosion and nutrient leaching. Because measures taken in one crop affect the subsequent crops, it is crucial to consider all measures in light of the cropping system as a whole and to correlate the environmental impacts with product volume and quality. Adapted plant protection strategies, for example, can significantly lower the impact on the environment.
Ecosystem Services and Environmental Impacts of Legumes
The EU project ‘LegumES’ assesses the potential of cropping systems with legumes to provide ecosystem services and mitigate environmental impacts.
Legumes provide numerous ecosystem services such as biological nitrogen fixation, the production of high-quality protein, a nectar supply for pollinating insects and the high aesthetic impact of flowering crops. At the same time, they help to prevent greenhouse-gas emissions during the manufacture and application of nitrogen fertilisers and to reduce ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions. The aim of the EU project ‘LegumES’ is to develop a methodology for a combined evaluation of ecosystem services and life-cycle assessment and to use this methodology to evaluate various cropping systems with and without legumes. This will lead to the development of a decision-making basis to increase the benefits of legumes.
Organic and Low-Input Breeding and Management
Low-input systems have the potential to reduce environmental impacts, but often at the cost of productivity. The aim of the EU project SOLIBAM was to lower environmental impacts through adapted management.
The aim of SOLIBAM (‘Strategies for Organic and Low-input integrated Breeding and Management’) was to develop new breeding and management methods adapted to the low-input systems. Agroscope’s Life Cycle Assessment Group evaluated the effectiveness of the innovations developed in the project for reducing the environmental impacts of agricultural products. Eight pilot farms from four European countries were studied and cereal products and vegetables were compared with reference products and conventional production. The environmental impacts per product unit of the low-input farms were sometimes lower but also sometimes higher than those of the reference farms.
Improving the Economic and Ecological Performances of Cropping Systems with Peas, Oilseed Rape and Wheat
The performance of crop rotations can be improved by optimising them according to economic and ecological criteria. As part of the CASDAR-PCB project, different field-crop rotations in France were examined using the SALCA life cycle assessment method.
The studies took place in the three French regions of Burgundy, Moselle and Beauce. Our regional partners selected a number of representative and especially promising crop rotations and described them. The modelling and life cycle assessment calculation were performed by calculating the combinations of previous and subsequent crops. This allowed the efficient calculation of a large number of crop rotations using a limited number of crop combinations. The results showed that the use of nitrogen has the greatest effect on the environmental impacts. Reducing the amount of nitrogen added has a favourable effect on both the environmental impacts per unit area and on ecoefficiency (environmental impacts per € contribution margin). Such a reduction can be achieved by introducing legumes into the crop rotation, or by reducing the amount of added N in fertilised crops.
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