Diversity of high-latitude agricultural landscapes and crop rotations: Increased, decreased or back and forth?

Peltonen‐Sainio, Pirjo; Jauhiainen, Lauri; Sorvali, Jaana

doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2017.02.011

Cited by 33 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…They provide the means to diversify cropping systems that are currently dominated by cereal monocultures in Finland (Peltonen-Sainio et al 2017) and benefit from nitrogen (N) fixation capacity. These and many other ecosystem services provided by grain legumes may lead to a decrease in dependency on fossil fuel-consuming input use, increase in production of crop-based protein and long-term improvements in resilience against climatic variability through diversified cropping systems in high-latitude conditions (Peltonen-Sainio et al 2016a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing an outperforming pea cultivar for intercropping with oat at high latitudes

Peltonen‐Sainio¹,

Kontturi²,

Laine³

et al. 2017

AFSci

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The cereal often dominates the grain legume in intercrops, especially when sown in larger amounts. This study assessed yield formation of pea (Pisum sativum L.) and oat (Avena sativa L.) in an intercropping system in high-latitude conditions. Three pea cultivars (Hulda, Karita and Perttu) and one oat cultivar (Roope) were grown as sole crops and intercrops with shares of either 7.5% or 15% of oat (as weight of sown seed mixture). Experiments were organized in three (southern, western and northern) locations of Finland for three years. Yield and vegetative above-ground biomass, their land equivalent ratio (LER, i.e., the yield in intercrop compared to that of the component yields in pure stands), and a number of yield components were measured prior to harvest at crop-stand and single-plant levels. The share of oat in the intercrop did not have any impact on variation in LER yield . Oat yield and yield components generally benefitted from a pea companion crop. The pea cultivar Perttu was superior in intercrops: it had a LER yield >1 in seven out of eight experiments (mean LER yield =1.06), while Karita had a LER yield >1 in four (mean LERyield =1.00) and Hulda only in one experiment (mean LER yield =0.98). Perttu proved to be a compatible pea companion for a pea-oat intercrop, likely because it was successful in overcompensating for decline in relative yield (RGY) of oat in intercrops, contrary to Hulda. However, none of the measured yield components of Perttu were associated with LER yield , suggesting compensation ability between them, while in Karita and Hulda, e.g., higher grain yield and number of grains and pods per square meter were associated with decline in LER yield . It was concluded that the success of Perttu as a companion for oat in intercrops is likely attributable to its flexibility in building yield through a variable combination of yield components rather than being outperformed due to some superior traits. Such flexibility, likely attributable to long duration of flowering supports resilience to weather variability that is typical for northern European conditions allowing Perttu to consistently sustain a LER yield >1.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing an outperforming pea cultivar for intercropping with oat at high latitudes

Peltonen‐Sainio¹,

Kontturi²,

Laine³

et al. 2017

AFSci

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“…Six pre-defined rotations were identified: (1) Cereal species monoculture, (2) cereal monoculture, (3) rotation with break-crop, (4) diverse crop rotation, (5) grassland rotation and (6) green-fallow rotation (Figure 1). Additional information on data processed was published earlier [29].…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Risk of Low Productivity is Dependent on Farm Characteristics: How to Turn Poor Performance into an Advantage

Peltonen‐Sainio

Jauhiainen

2019

Sustainability

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The principle role of agriculture is to produce food for the increasing human population. However, the environmental footprint needs to be simultaneously reduced. Data from the Finnish Food Authority (181,108 parcels in the south-western crop production region of Finland) were used to identify the farming system, farm type, farm size, field parcel scale, physical parcel characteristics, cultivated crops, crop rotations and cultivars. Sentinel-2 derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values were used to identify fields with very low productivity. Thereby, the impacts of farm and field characteristics on risks of low NDVI values and their associated means of coping by the farmer were studied. High variations in field parcel characteristics and growth capacity were typical in the studied area. Although it is challenging for farmers, high variation can provide many opportunities for the development of multifunctional and resource-smart production systems, e.g., by optimizing land use: allocating high-quality fields for food production, and poorly performing fields for extensification, i.e., the production of environmental benefits. Many usable policy instruments are available to support such a transition, but more focus should be put onto the most efficient means to enable progress towards environmentally, economically and socially sustainable high-latitude agricultural systems.

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“…This was calculated taking into account regional production risks and rotation requirements. Currently, cereals dominate the Finnish agricultural land use (Peltonen-Sainio et al, 2017). The expansion of legumes and rapeseed would take place at the expense of cereal cultivation, reducing the overproduction of low-quality bulk cereals and their exports as non-processed grains, following the conclusions of the Finnish Cereal Strategy (MMM, Ministry of Agriculture, and Forestry of Finland, 2016).…”

Section: Potential To Replace Imports Of the Selected Commoditiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We considered dehulled barley and oat grains to be potential alternative crops for imported rice because of their use in place of rice in Finnish cuisine. However, Finnish crop rotations suffer from barley and oat monocultures (Peltonen-Sainio et al, 2017), and hence, further expansion of their cultivation areas was considered to be unsustainable. Therefore, the capacity to replace rice with barley and oats was solely based on Finland's export volumes, assuming that the quantities of rice imported would be replaced by reduced exports of barley and oats.…”

Section: Potential To Replace Imports Of the Selected Commoditiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The freshwater resources available for agricultural production are vast in Finland, especially in relation to the proportion of the total population and agricultural land area and are therefore currently underused (Peltonen-Sainio et al, 2015a). Also, cereal monocultures are typical to the primary crop production region of Finland: in the utmost case they only include either barley or oats year after year (Peltonen-Sainio et al, 2017. Such monotonous crop sequencing has many negative impacts on the sustainability and productivity of agricultural systems (Peltonen-Sainio et al, 2015b, 2017.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Replacing Imports of Crop Based Commodities by Domestic Production in Finland: Potential to Reduce Virtual Water Imports

Sandström¹,

Lehikoinen²,

Peltonen‐Sainio³

2018

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Global water scarcity is a severe threat facing humanity today and it is expected to become even more alarming in the future. Agriculture is the biggest user of freshwater and large volumes of embedded virtual water in food products are traded through the global food system annually. Although Finland has vast water resources, it imports large quantities of virtual water-partly from countries suffering from water scarcity. In this article, we present a novel combination of the virtual water study together with an analysis of the potential reallocation of the outsourced production of rice, soybeans and rapeseed, from the water resource-efficiency point of view. To assess how Finland could reduce the outsourced water consumption by these three crops, we evaluated Finland's potential to replace their imports with local comparable products: domestic barley and oats, field peas and faba beans, and rapeseed, respectively. This replacement would both potentially ease the global pressure on already stressed regions and increase the agricultural diversity of the local agricultural systems. We found that by replacing the imports of the selected crops, considering the realistic potential in Finland, up to 16% of the blue water and almost 30% of the green water embedded in crop imports could be reduced. Although Finland is a minor player in the global food markets, our study presents a highly relevant case of how an industrialized country, with a relatively small population, can contribute to the sustainability of food systems globally.

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Diversity of high-latitude agricultural landscapes and crop rotations: Increased, decreased or back and forth?

Cited by 33 publications

References 40 publications

Characterizing an outperforming pea cultivar for intercropping with oat at high latitudes

Characterizing an outperforming pea cultivar for intercropping with oat at high latitudes

Risk of Low Productivity is Dependent on Farm Characteristics: How to Turn Poor Performance into an Advantage

Replacing Imports of Crop Based Commodities by Domestic Production in Finland: Potential to Reduce Virtual Water Imports

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