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Integrated farming - The Key Issues.
Farming in the spotlight.
Farming and food issues are nowadays rarely out of the news. The forthcoming reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the move to global trading and pricing, food safety, farm assurance schemes, and a heightened public concern for the environment and how food is produced, all combine to put modern farming under the spotlight.
Integrated Farm Management - a logical development.
IFM is increasingly being promoted across the European Union as the best means of combining efficient, profitable production with greater environmental responsibility and safety at the farm level.
What is Integrated Farm Management?
The definition generally adopted across Europe is "A whole farm policy aiming to provide a basis for efficient and profitable production which is economically viable and environmentally responsible. It integrates beneficial natural processes into modern farming practices using advanced technology and aims to minimise the environmental risks while conserving, enhancing and recreating that which is of environmental importance."
Integrated Farm Management Limited is a Company Limited by Guarantee with the following objectives:-
Components of Integrated Farm Management.
Similar organisations exist in other E.U. countries with the U.K. company LEAF (Linking ennvironment and farming) being best known in Ireland.
For a Farmer who wishes to practice IFM the procedure is anticipated to comprise of a self assessment Audit Document by which he/she checks present state of operations with that required to be in compliance with IFM approved practices.
A farmer who operates his business according to IFM guidelines aims to:-
A win - win solution
The idea of integrating beneficial natural processes into modern farming practices so that farming makes more efficient use of its inputs (such as fertilisers, seeds, energy and pesticides) makes good commercial sense. In addition, the better targeting of inputs, careful field margin management and the better use of traditional practices such as crop rotation should bring environmental benefits.
Does IFM deliver?
In theory integrated farm management should be attractive to farmers, environmental organisations and consumers-but how does it perform in practice? This is what equivalent organisations across Europe set out to determine, evaluate and to show.
What the research has confirmed-the main conclusions.
Profit.
It is possible to reduce inputs, deliver environmental benefits and still maintain, or in certain circumstances, increase profitability. Output may drop, but so too do costs. This is a consistent message from the work of researchers across Europe.
Reducing inputs
The key to a reduction of inputs is to reduce the need for them, by adopting crop husbandry and livestock practices that conserve nutrients and reduce pests, disease and weed attack
Critical of management factors are 1- forward planning,2- attention to detail, 3 -regular crops and livestock monitoring
Rotation
The diverse crop rotation is important. It offers a number of benefits. The ideal rotation integrates cereals and broad leafed crops and should include grass or a leguminous crop. Crop selection needs to take into account the farm location, soil type and of course, the market. A well designed rotation can reduce pests and disease attack; for example in first wheat there is much less carry over of soil or trash borne diseases. But some pest problems may increase; for example slugs after set-aside or rape.
Soil
The approach to soil management is crucial. Soil cultivations need to be appropriate for soil type, crop to be grown, topography, erosion risk and climate.
Minimal cultivation techniques give significant advantages over conventional ploughing and associated cultivations. They are:
Drilling
Timing of drilling can have a marked bearing on pest and disease attack
and on weed populations. For example the onset of barley yellow dwarf
virus can be reduced and even eliminated if autumn drilling is delayed
until October. This can significantly reduce the need for pesticide
application. Similarly with weeds,later drilling reduces weed competition.
Care is needed-too late a delay could result in loss of yield.
Disease control
This can often be managed by integrated crop husbandry. This involves exploiting differing crops, crop rotation, sewing it takes, sowing rates, using resistant variety is where possible and by more judicious use of nitrogen. Barely disease and set it is minimised, as in severity of attack, and fungicide use can be focused on limiting diseased induced yield loss.This can allow both the number of fungicide applications and the actual amount of product used be reduced.
Weed control
This can be a significant problem and crop rotation is the first line of attack. Integrated systems aim to maximise the impact of husbandry and mechanical methods, and so reduce the dependence on chemical herbicides. The different crop environments allow different control techniques to be adopted. Cropping sequences that alternates cereals we brought leave it crops provide the basis for such a strategy. Grass and weeds can be targeted in broad leaf crops and brought leave weeds in cereal crops.
Stale seedbed techniques (stubble cultivation plus contact herbicide ) can be used to eliminate weeds outside the cropping period.
Minimal tillage has a major impact on weed emergence and tends to stimulate a concentrated flush rather than a prolonged germination. This requires aalternative strategies for effective control which include harrowing and or a selective herbicide. By this means weed build up can be prevented and herbicide resistance avoided. Herbicide dose rates can often be reduced depending upon timing,weed size and crop vigour. As a result, inputs can be reduced in some instances by up to 50 per cent .
Note while there is scope for reducing herbicide inputs, care must be taken to avoid a build-up of a weed seed bank on arable farmland.
Sowing rates.
Seed rates may need to be higher to allow for:
Plant populations may need to be higher than in conventional systems, especially where weed pressure is high. They need to be adequate for the target yield, but not too dense to encourage lodging and disease.
Nutrients
These inputs also need to be managed so that supply to the crop is matched by demand. Oversupply at anytime is not only wasteful and expensive, but can lead crops to being more susceptible to pests and diseases.
Nitrogen needs care; supply should be matched to meet crop demand by utilisation of residual soil reserves, supplemented by applications to achieve targeted yield. Chopping and incorporation of crop residues helps to minimise loss and maintain fertility. Rotations based on a spring crops respond more favourably to low inputs of N. However, current varieties of spring crops are inherently lower yielding and consequently likely to be less profitable, unless I quality premium can be achieved.
Effective P and K balances can be achieved either by rotational maintenance replacing that which is removed by the crop or by crop specific applications.
Environmental benefits.
Whilst a pesticide reduction can make economic sense, direct environmental benefits may not automatically follow Precise application to avoid a off- crop impacts has obvious benefit. Similarly the threshold approach to pesticide use (not using pesticide if pest and weed populations are below the level that cause economic damage)can provide food supplies within the crop which can help to sustain beneficial insects, thereby improving biological control and biodiversity.
Encouragingly however, there appears to be few long-term direct effects on non-target insect and Spider populations when pesticides and used in accordance with current commercial practice-even at full manufacturer's recommended a rates.
Environmental enhancement requires positive action. The most significant is awareness of vulnerable areas and creation of habitat.
Integrated farming systems use common principles.
It is the detail that the site and crop specific. In all instances across the breadth of the research trials, there are no blueprints or prescriptions that can be universally applied. Decisions need to be made on a crop by crop and field by field a basis. Attention to detail, regular proper monitoring and the need for precision are all important
Meeting market needs.
The use of integrated a farm management is more likely to meet market requirements for Farm Assurance, because it seeks to use a range of techniques to suppress pests diseases and weeds and is a field specific approach. This is increasingly a requirement of producer protocols.
Environmental pay -backs
A number of environmental benefits have also been identified,
Earthworm populations have been maintained in the project at a time when populations have fallen by conventional plots. This is a feature of reduced ploughing regimes.
The measurement of environmental effects however is a complex and long-term process - it can take years before any appreciable affect can be seen from changes in farming practice.