Interactive tool for farmers to diversify high-latitude cereal-dominated crop rotations

ABSTRACT

Agricultural landscapes have become more intensive and monotonous, which may further increase biodiversity loss. Even though Finnish rural landscapes are often heterogeneous, crop choices and rotations lack diversity. The aim of this study was to develop an interactive, multi-step crop rotation tool, which acknowledges farmer’s preferences in land allocation for different crops depending on farm and field parcel characteristics. The tool was developed to provide as diverse a 5-year crop rotation plan as possible on the field parcel scale for the farmer’s consideration. The tool is flexible and interactive in the sense that it allows a farmer to include or exclude crops and spatially and temporally rearrange them to improve farming logistics. The tool was tested in southern-western Finland with the highest potential for diverse crop choices and sequencing. Test-runs indicated that the tool was powerful in proposing diversified crop rotations: the shares of current monotonous cereal-based rotations collapsed. The final diversification plan always lies in the farmer’s hands, who may exclude crop choices and even end up in cereal monoculture rotations. The tool provides estimates on farm economics for each step of the planning process. The tool will be available for all Finnish farmers (∼48,000) on the EconomyDoctor-portal with personal access only and the background information is automatically updated annually.

KEYWORDS:

• Crop rotation
• crop sequencing
• decision support
• diversification
• farmer
• field parcel

Acknowledgements

This work was financed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) as a part of a consortium project entitled Developing an Interactive Tool for Farmers to Facilitate Diversification of Crop Rotations (VILKAS) in collaboration with projects Boosting Integrated Assessment Modelling for Sustainability Analysis (BoostIA), Diversifying Cropping Systems for Climate Smart Agriculture (DivCSA, the Academy of Finland decision no. 316215) and Sustainable Intensification of Crop Production through Land Use Changes (PeltoOptimi).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Maa- ja Metsätalousministeriö [grant numbers 1455/03.01.02/2016, 1692/312/2014]; The Academy of Finland [grant number 316215]; Luonnonvarakeskus [grant number BoostIA].

Notes on contributors

Pirjo Peltonen-Sainio

Pirjo Peltonen-Sainio is a Research Professor at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). She is a crop scientist and agronomist with research focuses on the adaptation of crops and production systems to conditions at northern latitudes and to climate change. Issues of sustainable intensification of production systems, self-sufficiency in Nordic regions and food security, lie behind her work on the influence of environmental, climatic and genetic variation on field crop production and development of farmer support tools.

Lauri Jauhiainen

Lauri Jauhiainen works as a Senior Scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). He is specialized in analyzing long-term, multi-location experiments, farm survey datasets and remote sensing data, e.g., in relation to crop responses, input use, environmental impacts for development of farmer support systems and tools.

Arto Latukka

Arto Latukka is a Senior Scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). He is expert in business accounting and responsible on Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) in Finland. He is the person in charge of the Luke’s Economy Doctor internet platform and services of that platform. One of those services is Crop rotation-tool as the most recent farmer support system.