This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: What makes more sense when farming wheat—strips of wildflowers along fields or organic farming? Both options provide financial support via the European Union as environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices.
An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, has compared the ecological and economic benefits of these two farming methods in fields planted with winter wheat. They found that both measures increased biodiversity by 20% to 30% compared with conventionally farmed wheat fields. From an economic perspective, the organic fields were the most profitable.
Although yields were only half as high as those of conventionally farmed wheat, profits were 1.5 times higher. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. The researchers compared winter wheat fields managed in three different ways: conventionally farmed wheat with a strip of wildflowers; organically farmed wheat; and conventionally farmed wheat with no environmental intervention as a control.
They studied nine landscapes in the Göttingen area over a two-year period. The team found that the organically farmed fields contained the highest number of wild plant species, even though flower strips—including the sown wildflowers—had a similar number of species. Flower strips were visited by three times as many bee species as organic fields, but both environmental measures had higher bee populations than the control fields.
Ground beetles, spiders and hoverflies thrived under both environmental interventions, with 20% to 30% more species than in the conventionally farmed areas. From an economic perspective, the organically farmed areas were the most profitable: Despite wheat yields that were 50% lower, profits were more than 150% higher than those of the conventionally farmed control fields, due to better options to market and sell the crop, as well as EU subsidies. The profit from the fields with flower strips was only slightly lower than that of the control fields when subsidies for flower strips were factored in.
"We also compared the yields from conventionally farmed areas where there were flower strips against yields in areas that were conventionally farmed without flower strips. Interestingly, where there were no flower strips, yields were 5% higher and profits were 21% higher, suggesting that farmers probably established wildflower strips selectively on more peripheral and less productive areas of farmland," notes lead author Dr. Péter Batáry, head of the Landscape and Conservation Ecology Group, Center for Ecological Research in Hungary.
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