Produce a farmers guide on cover crops species selection, establishment, and termination

制定关于覆盖作物品种选择、建立和终止的农民指南

• 批准号: 10032962
• 金额: $ 4.09万
• 依托单位: KM & CAW GOWTHORPE
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10032962
• 关键词: Produce; farmers; guide; cover; crops

Cover crops are cornerstones of future farming policy and critical components of emerging 'regenerative agriculture' approaches that promise co-delivery of natural capital and human nutrition. While they can deliver multiple agronomic and environmental benefits, from increasing yields by building soil health and resilience to reducing on-farm emissions/inputs and increasing carbon capture and biodiversity, their ability to do so is context-dependant and reliant on selecting species that can perform under conditions specific to the field in which they are sown. Seed selection advice is available through suppliers, but with ~150 commercial mixes marketed in 2020 (Mills et al, 2020), navigating this marketplace is challenging. Appropriate seed selection is also just one of several key factors governing cover crop success, with decisions regarding establishment, management and termination techniques being equally important, especially where barriers to implementation exist (e.g. in organic systems where glyphosate is unavailable for termination, or in northern climates where windows for cover crop growth are typically reduced).Consequently, despite their inclusion in ELMs/SFIs, and as on-farm options in emerging carbon-trading platforms, farmers are exposed to significant uncertainty/risk when adopting cover crops, with no single source of 'best practice' advice covering seed selection, sowing, agronomy and termination. A poor decision made at any stage in the cover crop production process can result in a failed crop, wasted time, financial loss, and a missed opportunity to leverage a cover crop's full potential. In extreme cases, 'ecosystem disservices' can even result, for example where an ill-chosen cover crop provides a 'green bridge' for pests and diseases of the subsequent cash crop.Opportunity therefore exists to better support farmers to engage with cover crops and the agronomic, environmental, and socio-economic gains that can flow from them. To realise this opportunity, we propose development of an accessible, independent, farmer-led and scientifically-supported '_Farmer's guide to cover crop selection, establishment, and termination_' to provide confidence to farmers wishing to utilise cover crops, de-risking the decision-making process at all stages, reducing unforeseen costs, and improving the success and uptake of cover crops on-farm. Importantly, this guide will embed external factors that govern successful cover cropping across a range of end-user scenarios (e.g. soil compositions and regional climates), internal drivers that influence how cover crops are designed to best effect (e.g. crop rotation plans and the balance of desired cover crop deliverables), and the tools that can be used to deploy them, including in challenging circumstances.

覆盖作物是未来农业政策的基石，也是新兴“再生农业”方法的关键组成部分，这些方法承诺共同提供自然资本和人类营养。虽然它们可以提供多种农艺和环境效益，从通过建立土壤健康和复原力增加产量到减少农场排放/投入以及增加碳捕获和生物多样性，但它们这样做的能力取决于具体情况，并依赖于选择能够在播种地特定条件下发挥作用的物种。种子选择建议可通过供应商获得，但2020年将有约150种商业混合物上市（米尔斯等人，2020年），在这个市场上导航具有挑战性。适当的种子选择也只是决定覆盖作物成功的几个关键因素之一，关于种植、管理和终止技术的决定同样重要，特别是在存在实施障碍的情况下（例如，在有机系统中，草甘膦无法用于终止，或在北方气候中，覆盖作物生长的窗口通常减少）。因此，尽管它们被列入ELMs/SFI，作为新兴碳交易平台的农场选择，农民在采用覆盖作物时面临很大的不确定性/风险，没有单一的“最佳做法”建议来源，包括选种、播种、农艺和终止。在覆盖作物生产过程中的任何阶段做出的错误决策都可能导致作物失败，浪费时间，经济损失以及错过充分发挥覆盖作物潜力的机会。在极端情况下，甚至可能导致“生态系统损害”，例如，不当选择的覆盖作物为后续经济作物的病虫害提供了“绿色桥梁”。因此，有机会更好地支持农民种植覆盖作物，并从中获得农艺、环境和社会经济收益。为了实现这一机会，我们建议开发一个可访问的，独立的，农民主导的和科学支持的“农民指南，涵盖作物选择，建立和终止”，为希望利用覆盖作物的农民提供信心，降低决策过程中所有阶段的风险，降低不可预见的成本，并提高覆盖作物在农场的成功和吸收。重要的是，本指南将嵌入在一系列最终用户情景中管理成功覆盖作物的外部因素（例如土壤成分和区域气候），影响如何设计覆盖作物以获得最佳效果的内部驱动因素（例如作物轮作计划和所需覆盖作物交付成果的平衡），以及可用于部署这些因素的工具，包括在具有挑战性的情况下。