Ecological and agronomic evaluation of crop rotations in organic farming systems

Summary

The integration of nature conservation measures in organic farming requires special know-ledge about potential goal conflicts between ecological and agronomic requirements. The aim of this paper is to introduce a generation and evaluation tool for crop rotations that allows an assessment of the complex interdependencies of different biotic and abiotic parameters. The interdisciplinary ‘Nature Conserva-tion Farm Brodowin’ project provides the experimen-tal basis for developing practical solutions and compromises in this context. Two generated six-course crop rotations are presented as examples of this approach. The results show the sensitivity of the evaluation tool and its usability for improving crop rotations with regard to nature conservation