Spring 2021 EN

More documents

Recommendations

Info

English Issue Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 Rolf Schneider examines the crop development in a mixed crop of rapeseed and peas. He is one of the pioneers of no-till farming in Germany. Feeding soil life with organic matter Rolf Schneider, who is a farmer, has been cultivating his land with the no-till farming method for 30 years and builds up humus in the soil with fermented products. By Dipl.-Journ. Wolfgang Rudolph This year’s crop of rapeseed in Rolf Schneider`s field in Apolda, Thuringia, has bright yellow flowers and good branching. He sowed the crop with the no-tilling method in wheat stubble on September 8 th 2019 together with peas as a corollary plant. The legumes in the mixed crop collected nitrogen with their nodule bacteria until late fall. Once the peas were winter-killed, the rapeseed had sufficient nutrients in the spring. Schneider considers the no-till farming method which he also applies to all the other fields on his 300-hectare farm as the most natural form of agriculture. The concept of this system of cultivation has formed the basis of his farming strategy for the past 30 years. That makes Rolf Schneider one of the pioneers of no-till farming in Germany to which he is making a crucial contribution. He is more surprised than annoyed at the fact that the whole scene is relatively limited, as so many of the facts become obvious when you take a close look at them. And the generally good harvests he gets from his fields in such a dry area of the Weimar district would justify the results, as would the relatively low crop losses in the past two, very hot summers. The precipitation amounts in that period were considerably below the annual average of just under 500 mm. Only a few interested visitors came to inspect his fields and those of other notill farming enthusiasts in Germany from the vicinity. Instead, farmers from New Zealand or Australia came to exchange experience. Many of them were making repeated visits. “In any case, you can no longer rely on the experience you have in the area on weather development, not even if you take the wide fluctuation margin into account,” said Schneider. He added that only the relatively good water retention capacity is still as it was before. More than just non-inversion tillage “But the term no-till farming is a little unfortunate,” says 53-year-old Schneider. He says that it is more than just a matter of merely skipping some of the field work, particularly what he refers to as “continually rummaging through the field” to save machine power. He claims that is more the result of a strategy that focuses on field soil and soil life, meaning micro-organisms, bacteria and fungi. “The overall goal is to attain consistently loose, fertile soil that regenerates, forms humus and stores carbon in a cycle. To achieve that, the soil must be allowed to rest. This idea has inspired me back when I was still a young farmer,” says Schneider. He says you can see that, for example, in the forest or in permanent grassland. But in cultivated fields, the soil life has to be preserved and provided with organic material by doing without tillage, either through the root excretions of living plants or decomposition products of dead plant particles. “This is exactly what is best achieved by sowing the main crop into an established cover crop or stubble, intercropping and mixed seedphotos: Carmen Rudolph 14
Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 English Issue ing,” said the farmer when describing the basic idea of the cultivation system. He continued saying that applying the organic manure directly in the soil also promotes the formation of humus. The peas sown as corollary plants with the rapeseed show that this not only provides additional nitrogen, but a whole row of other effects achieved by non-inversion tillage. That includes better root penetration in the soil, suppression of flea beetles and other harmful insects with odors that are not typical for rapeseed, reducing the use of herbicides by ensuring faster soil coverage and, last but not least, the provision of food for soil organisms. In order to keep track of the effects of horticultural measures like that, Schneider inspects the nutrient status on each of his 18 fields in five-year intervals in addition to the legally prescribed soil samples by making a full soil analysis according to the Kinsey method. With this approach, the percentages of 13 nutrient elements are examined in a laboratory in the USA. “The balance of the individual micronutrients in relation to each other is decisive for the evaluation of the soil fertility derived from that,” Schneider explained. So, he injected the rapeseed field with a nutrient solution prepared according to the Kinsey recommendation. Before the farmer, who comes from the Westerwald in Hessen, acquired the former “Volkseigenes Gut” (German for People-Owned Property; abbreviated VEG) in Apolda in 1992, he had already gained experience with minimum tillage methods on his family’s farm. “It bothered me that vast quantities of energy were being consumed just to bring the field to heel with technology The dense population of earthworms in the field indicates diverse soil life. use,” said Schneider, thinking back. He also received fresh impulse from the ideas of the agricultural machinery manufacturer Horsch in the 1980`s. Schneider had bought one of the tillers with a sowing bar for broad seeding, the “sowing actuator”, which then was still mounted in the barn on the Sitzenhof farm in Schwandorf and used it for many years. The Horsch com- The digestates that come from the small liquid manure system are completely spread on the fields as fertilizer with a strip-tilling machine or a slurry injector. “It bothered me that vast quantities of energy were being consumed just to bring the field to heel with technology use” Rolf Schneider 15
Page 1 and 2: www.biogas.org German Biogas Associ
Page 3 and 4: Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 Editor
Page 5 and 6: Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 Englis
Page 13: Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 Englis
Page 17 and 18: AD & BIOGAS FEED TECHNOLOGY Biogas
Page 25 and 26: Triple Lifetime and Easiest Mainten

Spring 2021 EN

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?