Agriculture today faces great challenges, having to produce high-quality food and raw materials but also being presented with increasing requirements for protection of soil, water, climate, and biodiversity. What may future-proof plant production look like? How can bridges be built between different cultures of knowledge to interconnect the perspectives of agricultural scientists, farmers, and societal stakeholders?

This interdisciplinary joint research project by the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture (LfL) and the University of Passau aims to contribute to solving the challenges in biodiversity and soil conservation, climate change, economic competitiveness, and societal acceptance that the agricultural sector currently faces. A 12-ha field will serve as a platform for research, demonstration, and communication. Located right next to the LfL-site in Ruhstorf (south-eastern Germany), the field hosts an innovative, diversified and digitalized, small-scale plant production system: the crop rotation comprises seven crops grown in 15-m wide parallel strips. These strips are interspersed with biodiversity-enhancing structures, so-called beetle banks. The system is managed using modern agricultural equipment, including digital technologies and crop robots.

Below, you can find brief descriptions of our work packages. Click on the work package headings for images and more details in German, take a look at our list of publications, or contact us for more information!

Crop Robots

Robots for crop production are entering the ag tech market. The automation of repetitive tasks may increase time flexibility for famers while the independence from human work hours allows for lighter, less soil-compacting machines. Part of the field lab will be managed largely by crop robots as automation is expected to make small-scale agriculture more effective. By comparing yield and labor input between tractor- and robot-managed strips, we can determine to what extent crop robots fulfill these expectations.

Soil Conservation

Dry spells, heavy rains, and storms – the effects of climate change are increasingly tangible, also for the agricultural sector. Soil erosion due to heavy precipitation not only robs the field of fertile soil, but also flushes sediment and residues of fertilizer and plant protection products into waterways. Good soil structure and soil cover, on the other hand, can prevent such events through increasing water and sediment retention. We investigate how different methods of cultivation and plant protection as well as different crops affect soil structure using sensors and drones.

Plant Protection

Integrated plant protection relies on a multitude of direct and indirect measures to protect the crop from weeds, pathogens, and pests. The technologies are developed further continuously, with increasing importance attributed to societal and political demands for better environmental compatibility of chemical plant protection. The Future Crop Farming project compares two plant protection strategies - good agricultural practice vs. minimization of chemical plant protection - with respect to their economic performance as well as biodiversity and soil protection effects.

Biodiversity

A commonly used term, yet difficult to grasp – biodiversity in agricultural landscapes may refer to many aspects. Our project focuses on the role of organisms above and below ground that may help control pests, recycle nutrients, and pollinate crops. An increase in the number of crops in a rotation is known to biodiversity, although not all effects are fully understood yet. Additionally, we research the effect of beetle banks, dam-like structures with perennial planting that provide a favorable micro-climate for beetles, to generate new insights into agro-biodiversity.

Socio-Economic Evaluation

Economic profitability is an important question for the adoption of new technologies, but the social aspects must not be neglected: visual appearance of field or landscape, other people’s opinions, changes to work routines, and many other difficult to measure factors influence acceptance. A comprehensive evaluation of Future Crop Farming therefore needs to consider economic competitiveness of novel approaches but also their acceptance in farmer and non-farmer populations.

Knowledge Transfer

Everyone has a different perspective on agriculture, whether it be as a farmer, agricultural scientist, politician, or citizen. These perspectives are informed by different kinds of knowledge. We try to bring these ‘cultures of knowledge’ in contact with each other to facilitate mutual exchange and understanding and to identify potential barriers. The University of Passau’s Chair of Sociology of Technology and Sustainable Development thus work on an innovative concept of knowledge transfer: instead of only transferring scientific results, they should be connected to local cultures of knowledge to prevent unintended negative reactions.