Agricultural autumn drought and crop yield in 2011 in Poland

Over the recent years, drought has been occurring with an ever increasing frequency in Poland. The longer the rainless period lasts, the more acute its impacts are. Agricultural drought manifests itself as a prolonged period of water shortage for agricultural crops during their growth season resulting in yield reduction. Extent of drought was evaluated by the climatic water balance (CWB). Climatic water balance is an indicator that determines the state of humidification of the environment using data measured at meteorological stations. It is defined as the difference between atmospheric precipitation and evapotranspiration (in millimeters) calculated by an empirical formula taking into account: temperature, sunshine, and length of the day. CWB was calculated using meteorological data from 294 weather stations and weather posts across Poland. Spatial data from point measurements were interpolated using the Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Yield forecasts were made for major crops in Poland using agro-meteorological yield models and weather indices (WI). Yield figures were based on data from the Central Statistical Office of Poland (GUS). The autumn of 2011 was the driest in several dozen years in many localities of southeastern Poland. For instance, at the weather station in Puławy, the lowest level of precipitation had been recorded since 1871. Weather conditions prevailing in the growing season of 2012 were very beneficial for winter cereals and winter rapeseed. As for sugar beet, the weather also favored high yields over most of the growing season, except the final stage of growth. Notwithstanding the extreme drought in the autumn of 2011, the good weather conditions in the remaining part of the growth period caused the yields of winter crops and sugar beet to be high. The very scant autumn precipitation, even though it had negative impact on the germination of cereals, seedling emergence, and seedling growth, did not cause any major losses to yields. Water supplies from September precipitation combined with frequent morning mists, fogs, and dew mitigated the impact of prolonged drought and were sufficient to sustain the yields at an acceptable level

Environmental impact assessments of integrated food and non-food production systems in Italy and Denmark

Given the environmental footprints of the conventional agriculture, it is imperative to test and validate alternative production systems, with lower environmental impacts to mitigate and adapt our production systems. In this study, we identified six production systems, four in Italy and two in Denmark, to assess the environmental footprint for comparison among the production systems and additionally with conventional production systems. SimaPro 8.4 software was used to carry out the life cycle impact assessment. Among other indicators, three significantly important indicators, namely global warming potential, acidification, and eutrophication, were used as the proxy for life cycle impact assessment. In Italy, the production systems compared were silvopastoral, organic, traditional, and conventional olive production systems, whereas in Denmark, combined food and energy production system was compared with the conventional wheat production system. Among the six production systems, conventional wheat production system in Denmark accounted for highest global warming potential, acidification, and eutrophication. In Italy, global warming potential was highest in traditional agroforestry and lowest in the silvopastoral system whereas acidification and eutrophication were lowest in the traditional production system with high acidification effects from the silvopastoral system. In Italy, machinery use contributed the highest greenhouse gas emissions in silvopastoral and organic production systems, while the large contribution to greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer was recorded in the traditional and conventional production systems. In Denmark, the combined food and energy system had lower environmental impacts compared to the conventional wheat production system according to the three indicators. For both systems in Denmark, the main contribution to greenhouse gas emission was due to fertilizer and manure application. The study showed that integrated food and non-food systems are more environmentally friendly and less polluting compared to the conventional wheat production system in Denmark with use of chemical fertilizers and irrigation. The study can contribute to informed decision making by the land managers and policy makers for promotion of environmentally friendly food and non-food production practices, to meet the European Union targets of providing biomass-based materials and energy to contribute to the bio-based economy in Europe and beyond

Cereal yield gaps across Europe

peer-reviewedEurope accounts for around 20% of the global cereal production and is a net exporter of ca. 15% of that production. Increasing global demand for cereals justifies questions as to where and by how much Europe’s production can be increased to meet future global market demands, and how much additional nitrogen (N) crops would require. The latter is important as environmental concern and legislation are equally important as production aims in Europe. Here, we used a country-by-country, bottom-up approach to establish statistical estimates of actual grain yield, and compare these to modelled estimates of potential yields for either irrigated or rainfed conditions. In this way, we identified the yield gaps and the opportunities for increased cereal production for wheat, barley and maize, which represent 90% of the cereals grown in Europe. The combined mean annual yield gap of wheat, barley, maize was 239 Mt, or 42% of the yield potential. The national yield gaps ranged between 10 and 70%, with small gaps in many north-western European countries, and large gaps in eastern and south-western Europe. Yield gaps for rainfed and irrigated maize were consistently lower than those of wheat and barley. If the yield gaps of maize, wheat and barley would be reduced from 42% to 20% of potential yields, this would increase annual cereal production by 128 Mt (39%). Potential for higher cereal production exists predominantly in Eastern Europe, and half of Europe’s potential increase is located in Ukraine, Romania and Poland. Unlocking the identified potential for production growth requires a substantial increase of the crop N uptake of 4.8 Mt. Across Europe, the average N uptake gaps, to achieve 80% of the yield potential, were 87, 77 and 43 kg N ha−1 for wheat, barley and maize, respectively. Emphasis on increasing the N use efficiency is necessary to minimize the need for additional N inputs. Whether yield gap reduction is desirable and feasible is a matter of balancing Europe’s role in global food security, farm economic objectives and environmental targets.We received financial contributions from the strategic investment funds (IPOP) of Wageningen University & Research, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MACSUR under EU FACCE-JPI which was funded through several national contributions, and TempAg (http://tempag.net/)

Life Cycle Assessment of olive cultivation in Italy: comparison of three management systems

The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential environmental life-cycle impacts of olives produced in three management systems of olive tree integrated with natural grassland. This study compares three small farms using different farming systems (silvopastoral, organic and traditional) with an average Italian farm using life cycle assessment methodology. The most related to agriculture impact categories were assessed: Global Warming potential, acidification and eutrophication. All farms were are using small amount of fertilisers, low use of chemicals, and no pesticides. However among all agricultural practices, fertilization has the highest environmental impact followed by machinery use. In this case organic farming system is looking as the most promising one due to low organic fertiliser application

Straw potential for non-agricultural purposes in Lublin province

The use of renewable energy sources with application of innovative technologies for that purpose is one of the elements of the bioeconomy, and constitutes one of the smart specializations of the Lublin region. The growing demand for energy will force increasing the share of renewable energy in the total energy production. The paper presents theoretical and technical potential of straw, which can be used for non-agricultural purposes, including energy production. The estimation of this potential takes into account utilization of straw for agricultural purposes in the first place, indicating only its surplus to be used for other purposes. The analysis was carried out for all NUTS-5 of the Lublin province

Yield gap analysis of cereals in Europe - Supported by local knowledge

The increasing demand for food requires a sustainable intensification of crop production in underperforming areas. Many global and local studies have addressed yield gaps, i.e. the difference between potential or water-limited yields and actual yields. Global studies generally rely on generic models combined with a grid-based approach. Although using a consistent method, it has been shown they are not suitable for local yield gap assessment. Local studies generally exploit knowledge of location-specific conditions and management, but are less comparable across locations due to different methods. To overcome these inconsistencies, the Global Yield Gap Atlas (GYGA, www.yieldgap.org) proposes a consistent bottom-up approach to estimate yield gaps. This paper outlines the implementation of GYGA for estimating yield gaps of cereals across Europe. For each country, climate zones are identified which represent the major growing areas. Within these climate zones, weather stations are selected with >=15 years of daily data. For dominant soil types within a buffer zone around the weather stations, the potential and water-limited yields are simulated with a crop model, using local knowledge on management. Actual yields are derived from sub-national statistics. Yield gaps are scaled up from buffer zones to climate zones and countries. We will present the first results for selected regions in Europe, and discuss methodological issues on location specific weather and upscaling from weather station buffer zones to climate zones and countries. Furthermore we will look ahead at the implementation of the yield gap cross cutting activity (XC9) in MACSUR-2

The actions of research institutes to support adaptation to climate change

A crucial part of every adaptation planning and disaster risk reduction is estimation of vulnerable areas and risk in the future. Only a well-developed monitoring system could bring valuable information to create possible scenarios to set up adaptation plans. Monitoring systems of meteorological conditions, surface water, groundwater, landslides, seacoast, agricultural drought as well as their standards and methodologies, are crucial for establishing an effective warning system of every country, and thus are the subject of research conducted by national institutes. Therefore, the conditions of this national research (getting trained staff, equipment etc.) is essential to provide reliable information for a national adaptation plan and for economic assessment of climate change impacts. Poland has significant experiences in monitoring systems, data collecting and visualizing, as well as in the development of scenarios and risk maps. Methodologies and capacity building, necessary for their use, along with experiences and lessons, learned to get valuable information for disaster risk reduction, were presented by the authors from the research during the 24th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 24) in Katowice (December 2018). The presentation contributed to the global adaptation process through experience sharing that is important for the relevant research conducted in the least developed countries