2019/01/01 by Anne Schaub, E. Chaumont, Schaub, Anne +15
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Agriculture and Rural Development Research #Agronomic Practices and Intercropping Systems #Agricultural Innovations and Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.15454/mbltkd
Three innovative cropping systems were tested during several years. They aimed to reduce the use of pesticides by 50% compared to local reference cropping systems while being still profitable. Reference systems were maize-winter wheat rotations in mixed crop-livestock agricultural systems. The use of total pesticides was reduced by 22-50%, i.e. 12-65% for herbicides and 55-80% for other pesticides. Toxic exposure of farmers was lower for innovative systems ; risk of active substance transfer to the environment was also lower. Regarding profitability, results were different from one experiment to another, with higher economic margins for the innovative system for two of them, and lower margin for the last one. Two strategies were employed to achieve these positive results on pesticides use and impacts and on profitability : moderate diversification of crop sequences combined with intensive tillage on one hand versus minimum tillage associated with soil cover and high crop sequences diversification on the other hand. Resulting weed pressure was acceptable or rather acceptable in two out of the three experiments. Agronomic analysis of success and failure cases led to new insights on success conditions for both strategies of weed management.