Crop Performance in a Stockless Arable Organic Rotation in Eastern England

Abstract

In stockless organic crop rotations, the absence of livestock, manures and long-term grass/clover leys pose significant agronomic challenges. A study in eastern England, from 1990 to 2000, on a productive silty clay loam soil previously in an intensive non-organic arable rotation, assessed crop performance in a stockless arable organic rotation. Performance of fertility building crops was very variable; establishment was affected by a range of environmental and other factors. However, this was not clearly reflected in the performance of following arable crops illustrating the over-riding impact of environmental conditions on organic crop performance, particularly on a fertile soil. Over the first full crop rotation, mean yields of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) (7.3 t ha-'), spring wheat (Triticum aestivum) (4.1 t ha-') and spring beans (Viciafaba) (3.6 t ha-') were all above average for organic production in the U.K.. Foliar disease levels in combinable crops were generally very low. Damage from slugs (Deroceras reticulatum) and blight (Phytophthora infestans) contributed to very variable potato (Solanum tuberosum) yields (14.7 to 40.2 t ha-1 ). Soil available P and K tended to decline slowly with time but remained above levels likely to restrict crop growth.

Field scale functional agrobiodiversity in organic wheat: Effects on weed reduction, disease susceptibility and yield

“…Designing successful wheat-living mulch systems would be a strategic aim in stockless cropping system, where legume presence in rotation is generally low. In organic and low-input conditions, such systems generally suffer from unbalanced nitrogen cycling and high weed pressure due to the absence of livestock, manure and of a ley phase (Cormack, 2006;Rollet et al, 2006). Technical feasibility is however a bottleneck for adopting such strategies.…”

Predicting the effect of rotation design on N, P, K balances on organic farms using the NDICEA model

“…The model was run using crop, soil and weather data from the UK Government-funded organic conversion trials held at Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) Terrington (Cormack, 2006), Warwick University's Hunts Mill site (Lennartsson, 2000) as well as other long-term trials at Elm Farm Research Centre (EFRC) (Welsh et al, 2002), Scotland's Rural College (SRUC Tulloch and Woodside; Taylor et al, 2006) and a grazing only trial at the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at the University of Aberystwyth (Ty Gwyn) (Haggar and Padel, 1996). Please see Table 2 and Fig.…”

“…Soils data from each site were collected from project reports, site records and published literature (Haggar and Padel, 1996; Lennartsson, 2000; Welsh et al, 2002; Cormack, 2006; Taylor et al, 2006). The bulked soil samples at each site were taken along a W transect twice each year in the case of Elm Farm (Welsh et al, 2002), Warwick University (Lennartsson, 2000) and ADAS Terrington (Cormack, 2006) (after sowing and harvest) and once per year at the SRUC sites (Watson et al, 2011) and at Ty Gwyn (Haggar and Padel, 1996) (January and April, respectively). Samples were analyzed for available P (Modified Morgan's solution at SRUC sites and Olsen's method at other sites), available K (Modified Morgan's solution at SRUC sites and ammonium nitrate extraction at ADAS and Elm Farm), mineral N (potassium chloride solution) and organic matter (loss on ignition).…”

Veganic farming in the United States: farmer perceptions, motivations, and experiences

“…Academic and practitioner literature has favorably associated veganic approaches with various agronomic factors, including: yield, quality, nutrient cycling, soil nitrogen level, soil carbon storage, soil biology, soil organic matter, and energy inputs (Pimentel et al 2005 ; Cormack 2006 ; Hepperly et al 2006 ; Eisenbach et al 2018 ; Matsuura et al 2018 ; Eisenbach et al 2019 ; Roussis et al 2019 ; Rosato et al 2020 ; Utter and Seymour forthcoming) 3 ; sustainable agriculture or food systems (Hall and Tolhurst 2007 ; Visak 2007 ; Burnett 2014 ; Bonsall 2015 ; Hagemann and Potthast 2015 ; Hirth 2020 ; Kassam and Kassam 2021 ; Nobari 2021 ); food safety (O’Brien 1964 ; Seymour 2018a ; Alsanius et al 2019 ; Utter and Seymour forthcoming); diminished environmental impacts (Markussen et al 2014 ; Seymour 2018a ); marketing potential (Jürkenbeck et al 2019 ; Jürkenbeck and Spiller 2020 ); and “animal-friendly” (Visak 2007 ) and “post-lethal” (Mann 2020 ) agriculture. Despite the diversity of veganic methods and the ostensible benefits of veganic agriculture, there is relatively little scholarly literature on the topic , as has been noted by Hagemann and Potthast ( 2015 ), Schmutz and Foresi ( 2017 ), and Jürkenbeck et al ( 2019 ).…”

“… 3 Several of these references reflect field trials with a known veganic component—identified in Cormack ( 2006 ) as “truly stockless,” or verified through personal correspondence. There are a number of additional field trials around the world that Watson et al ( 2006 ) identify as including a “stockless” rotation.…”