A New Framework to Assess Sustainability of Soil Improving Cropping Systems in Europe

Abstract

Assessing agricultural sustainability is one of the most challenging tasks related to expertise and support methodologies because it entails multidisciplinary aspects and builds on cultural and value-based elements. Thus, agricultural sustainability should be considered a social concept, reliable enough to support decision makers and policy development in a broad context. The aim of this manuscript was to develop a methodology for the assessment of the sustainability of soil improving cropping systems (SICS) in Europe. For this purpose, a decision tree based on weights (%) was chosen because it allows more flexibility. The methodology was tested with data from the SoilCare Horizon 2020 study site in Germany for the assessment of the impact of the integration of cover crops into the crop rotation. The effect on the environmental indicators was slightly positive, but most assessed properties did not change over the short course of the experiment. Farmers reported that the increase in workload was outweighed by a reputation gain for using cover crops. The incorporation of cover crops reduced slightly the profitability, due to the costs for seeds and establishment of cover crops. The proposed assessment methodology provides a comprehensive summary to assess the agricultural sustainability of SICS.

Soil-Improving Cropping Systems for Sustainable and Profitable Farming in Europe

“…In the field experiments, SICS were compared with a control (usually a standard conventional practice) [79], and SICS were monitored for 2-4 years. Data from the field trials were assessed using a decision tree in terms of soil quality (physical, biological, and chemical); environmental, economic, and sociocultural dimensions; and sustainability, resulting in a score between −1 and 1 for each dimension [80]. For the three dimensions, the following methods were used for scoring:…”

“…Environmental (including soil quality): Monitoring results compared SICS and control for several chemical, physical, and biological soil properties such as infiltration, aggregate stability, bulk density, mineral nitrogen, soil organic carbon (SOC), pH, earthworm density, crop yield, yield quality, crop cover, pests, root diseases, and weed diseases (see [79,80]). For each parameter, it was determined whether there was a statistically significant difference between SICS and control using mixed-effects models adjusted to the different experimental designs.…”

“…Economic: The impact score compared costs and benefits for SICS and control (see [80]), where costs were calculated as the sum of investment costs, maintenance costs, and production costs. Equipment costs were not included.…”

“…Detailed results of the evaluation of environmental, economic, and sociocultural dimensions were presented in [79]. For SICS for which data on all three dimensions were available, we calculated the impact on sustainability as the average of the impact on the three dimensions [80].…”

“…This tool allows users to compare different SICS with regard to various aspects, including IAM results and the SICS potential index. [80]. Values were scored on a range from −1 to 1 for those experiments where data on all three dimensions were available (see [79]).…”