Analysing reduced tillage practices within a bio-economic modelling framework

Toby J Townsend,Stephen J Ramsden,Paul Wilson

doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2016.04.005

Toby J Townsend, Stephen J Ramsden + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2016.04.005

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Abstract

Sustainable intensification of agricultural production systems will require changes in farm practice. Within arable cropping systems, reducing the intensity of tillage practices (e.g. reduced tillage) potentially offers one such sustainable intensification approach. Previous researchers have tended to examine the impact of reduced tillage on specific factors such as yield or weed burden, whilst, by definition, sustainable intensification necessitates a system-based analysis approach. Drawing upon a bio-economic optimisation model, ‘MEETA’, we quantify trade-off implications between potential yield reductions, reduced cultivation costs and increased crop protection costs. We extend the MEETA model to quantify farm-level net margin, in addition to quantifying farm-level gross margin, net energy, and greenhouse gas emissions. For the lowest intensity tillage system, zero tillage, results demonstrate financial benefits over a conventional tillage system even when the zero tillage system includes yield penalties of 0–14.2% (across all crops). Average yield reductions from zero tillage literature range from 0 to 8.5%, demonstrating that reduced tillage offers a realistic and attainable sustainable intensification intervention, given the financial and environmental benefits, albeit that yield reductions will require more land to compensate for loss of calories produced, negating environmental benefits observed at farm-level. However, increasing uptake of reduced tillage from current levels will probably require policy intervention; an extension of the recent changes to the CAP (‘Greening’) provides an opportunity to do this.

Highlights

In the face of a growing world population, increased resource scarcity and the challenges of climate change mitigation, there is an increasing need for adaptation in agriculture and agricultural systems towards practices that lead to “Sustainable Intensification” (SI; Wilson, 2014)
Within arable systems dominated by combinable crop production, changes to cultivation practices, for example towards reduced tillage1 (RT), conservation tillage or zero tillage (ZT), have the potential to provide multiple environmental benefits (Holland, 2004) that would contribute towards SI objectives
winter oilseed rape (WOSR) is established after RT practices, whereas the winter wheat (WW) and winter barley (WB) are established after ploughing under the rotational ploughing (RP) scenario

Summary

Introduction

In the face of a growing world population, increased resource scarcity and the challenges of climate change mitigation, there is an increasing need for adaptation in agriculture and agricultural systems towards practices that lead to “Sustainable Intensification” (SI; Wilson, 2014). Within arable systems dominated by combinable crop production (e.g. wheat, oilseed rape), changes to cultivation practices, for example towards reduced tillage (RT), conservation tillage or zero tillage (ZT), have the potential to provide multiple environmental benefits (Holland, 2004) that would contribute towards SI objectives. These cultivation practices do not involve soil inversion Reduced machinery use leads to cost savings (Vozka, 2007), which is the primary driver of RT use in these areas (Davies and Finney, 2002). When comparing RT with conventional tillage (CT) Verch et al (2009) identified increased net returns from a German RT system of approximately €100 ha−1

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