Pubblicazioni

Soils provide multiple ecosystem services that enable a continuous production of crops. This ability is largely affected by the actual land management system in place. Farming systems that promote ecosystem services are also expected to be more resilient against external stressors, enabling a more stable crop production. To better understand the soil-, management- and climatic- related drivers of yield stability in different farming systems, the EJP SOIL ARTEMIS project is analysing different long-term field experiments across Europe on these parameters. Here we present the results of the Swiss DOK-experiment, that continuously compares organic and conventional farming systems since more than 45 years at two fertilisation levels (standard and halved). We conducted a crop-specific production risk assessment, defining yield stability as the probability that the yield of a specific farming system falls below the 70th percentile of the mean of a reference yield. To assess crop-specific drought influences on yield, we calculated different climate variables and statistically assessed their influence on yield stability. Preliminary results indicate that conventional farming systems have more stable yields during adverse climate conditions. Fertilization-based differences in yield stability are more pronounced for organic farming systems. Also soybean yields are less sensitive to climate extremes, and effect of farming systems are small.