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PlantyOrganic: Design and results 2012

Abstract

Increasingly strict legislation about fertilizer inputs and developing organic regulations are a strong stimulation to optimize the internal nutrient dynamics of organic arable farms. In the project “PlantyOrganic” , initialized by Biowad and realized at SPNA location Kollumerwaard, a challenging arable system is developed and tested: 100% internal nitrogen supply without input of nutrients from outside. In this report the design of the rotation and fertilizer scheme is presented and discussed, and the starting conditions in spring 2012 are documented. The NDICEA nitrogen model is used to explore the nitrogen dynamics. It is concluded that a 100% farm-own nitrogen supply can be achieved with good production levels. The 2012 results gave no reason to reconsider the rotation and fertilizer design, but since this was the first year of this experiment none of the crops had the precrop as foreseen in the design and the fertilizer used was only partly cut-and-carry fertilizer

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