Analysing Farmers’ Herbicide Use Pattern to Estimate the Magnitude and Field-Economic Value of Crop Diversification

Abstract

We present an on-farm approach to measure the effect of crop diversification on farmers’ field economic values. Eleven years of data (2010–2020) on the chemical herbicide use, tillage practices and crop yields of 17 farms in north-eastern Germany were examined for winter wheat (WW) and winter oilseed rape (WOSR). We used a common conceptual framework to classify farmers’ crop sequences according to their susceptibility to weeds (‘riskiness’). Linear mixed models were used to analyse the relationship between crop sequence, tillage practice (inversion/non-inversion) and the response variables ‘total herbicide costs’, ‘crop yield’ and ‘economic income’. Our results indicate that farmers in the area surveyed commonly grow crop sequences with a high risk of weeds. The driving forces behind this classification are high ratios of winter cereals and WOSR in the sequences. The most interesting result of our analysis is that farmers’ total herbicide costs (THCfy) significantly decreased from a higher to a lower riskiness class. Diversified crop sequences decreased the THCfy for WW by up to 12 EUR ha−1 and for WOSR by 19–56 EUR ha−1. Considering the crop diversification effects, the combined influence of tillage and crop sequence seems to be important. Significant differences in crop yield between the riskiness classes were found in WW and WOSR solely in non-inversion tillage systems. Hence, the analysis of farmers’ ‘economic income’ revealed the great impact of crop diversification for non-inversion tillage systems. Indeed, we found that simplifying both crop sequence diversity and tillage intensity implies higher herbicide costs and, thereby, higher economic input. The best strategy for reducing herbicide costs in WW and WOSR cropping is to increase the use of summer crops or field grass as previous crops.