Browsing by Subject "farming system"

Crop rotation is an important farming practice in organic agriculture. In the research it has been shown that diverse crop rotations enhance productivity as well as agrobiodiversity, and thus the organic regulations of EU obliges the farmers to have diverse rotations on their farms. However, it is unclear what kinds of crop rotations have been implemented on Finnish farms. In this master’s thesis the aim was to find out what kinds of crop rotations plans there were used on 21 organic arable farms on Uusimaa and Satakunta regions in the Southern Finland and how the plans were put into practice during 2008–2012. The aim was also to study, if there were differences between the regions. The study material consisted of the crop rotation plans which are required from the farmers in the beginning of 5-year organic subsidy period and of the information from EU’s IACS-database about the crops grown on farms. The typical crop rotation on the organic farms was the alternation between cereals and ley, in different pace on different field plots. Also the winter rye – oat – two- or three-year ley was a typical crop rotation. Crop rotation plans and realized crop rotations were compared with each other by “realization index”, which was developed by this study. The realization index showed that the plans were followed every year less and less on the average, but on the same time it was also typical to come back to the plans. However, as a consequence of the changes made into the plans, the field area of the farm was usually not an entity, bound together by crop rotation, but the crop rotation was planned for the each field plot separately. There were statistically significant differences in crop rotations plans between regions. In Uusimaa region the crop rotations were based on crop types whereas in Satakunta region the crops to be grown were identified more precisely. Several future research topics emerged, such as the significance of crop rotations in organic agriculture, farmer’s strategies in crop rotation design and the sustainability as well as productivity of those strategies.