Browsing by Subject "Nachhaltige Landwirtschaft"

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Functional larval-parasitoid biodiversity in apple orchards as benchmark for management intensity and potential instrument for ecological amelioration of Iranian apple production
(2019) Lashkari-Bod, Abdullah; Zebitz, Claus P. W.
Although a consensus through the concept of sustainable agricultural production and its indicators to assess its functionality varies, it is expected to be long-term and reliable. The sustainability would change temporarily and spatially. It is influenced by political, social and economical is-sues, which reveals its interdisciplinary essence in concert with farming strategies and practices to produce human food. The management of plant protection is capable to impose unsustainability into farming system. The frequency and intensity of unsustainable practices would result into devastating effects on diversity and abundance of beneficial arthropods. The communities of natural enemy may promote sustainable management, but the anthropogenic interventions such as broad-spectrum pesticide applications would distort the essence of self-monitoring of natural invertebrates as regulators. The conventional agricultural management makes the habitats to be simplified through food webs and ecological complexities, which lead to species loss (extinction or emigration) and consequently to species interactions (connectance). The ecologically based management such as integrated pest management (IPM) would focus to maintain species and increase diversity in natural communities, which contributes to sustainable approach as alternative versus conventional agriculture. The negative effects of chemical pesticides would dramatically decline the ecosystem process and affect the energy flow among different trophic levels, which is manifested as functional rates in local or regional scale of ecosystem. The human-manipulated areas create negative consequences on the ecosystem functionality through vanishing the key natural resources (i.e. shelter, food provision, and alternative host prey), which affect maintaining natural enemy communities. The complementarity effects of antagonist communities can lead a synergetic impact on pest control, when biodiversity is conserved through vegetation, rational bio-pesticide application, and ecological infrastructure, the functional traits (richness and evenness) among interacting species will be improved. Furthermore, the intensified agriculture would arise pest outbreaks or convert a secondary and unimportant pest into a serious one. The antagonistic communities may represent as bio-indicators. The presence or absence of higher trophic levels and their complexes would reflect biotic or abiotic changes in the environment, which would eventually be expressed as parasitism or consumption rate. The scope of current research is limited to indicators of sustainability through pest management and does not comply a holistic approach on ecological, political, social, and economical managements. The preliminary results focus on the status quo of plant protection in Iran and biodiversity indices in Germany used to compare the different farm systems to show how the management can affect the community components and their interactions. The environmental and anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity of beneficial arthropods in different orchard management conducted in Germany, where the accessibility of abandoned apple orchards is more prevalent than Iran. To evaluate the impact of conventional intensive management vs. ecologically based sustainable practices on invertebrate beneficial community, a comparative study was conducted to assess food web pattern of larval-parasitoid communities, biodiversity indices, and parasitism rate in response to apple orchard by four different managements. Field samplings were occurred during 2011-2015 in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The orchard managements were distinguished based on the frequency and intensity of pesticide applications into the farming system. The categories of orchard management were managed (organic and integrated), and Streuobst (semi-abandoned orchard), which were situated in Denzlingen, Emmendingen, Goldener Grund, Hohenheim research center, Ilsfeld, Lake Constance, Neuhausen, Plieningen, Rommelshausen, and Scharnhausen. The sampling was conducted by installation of corrugated cardboard and random observation to collect larval caterpillars (Tortricidae and Gelechiidae). The collected samples were transferred to lab to rear adult parasitoids and further studies on taxonomic affiliation. Out of 7,923 healthy host larvae collected, totally 324 parasitoid individuals from three sub-families of Braconidae, Ichneumonidae, and Perilampidae were found. Four parasitoid species were found positive host-density dependent, the rest of the parasitoid species showed no densi-ty-dependency or were found in too small numbers. The highest richness, abundance, and evenness of larval-parasitoids were found in Streuobst orchards (i.g. Plieningen), which received no to minimal pesticide inputs. The interaction diversity of food webs (connectance) in Streuobst showed the highest number of trophic links in response to other orchard managements where the commercial (conventional) orchards harbor no to the least biodiversity indices of beneficial arthropods. Percentage similarity also assessed to depict the similarity of larval-parasitoid community structures in different managements. It was revealed the orchards with the same management contain similar parasitoid compositions. To describe and analyze the information on apple growing management, circumstances of plant protection, pest status, and major obstacles to initialize sustainable production in Iran, a questionnaire was designed to survey 39 apple growers from East-Azerbaijan, Fars, Isfahan, Tehran, and W. Azerbaijan in July 2014. It was found that management of the orchards mostly is under the supervision of the apple growers. Farmers in Isfahan suffer a road infrastructure to have an access to the nearest market to sell their product indicating an economic monopoly. The distance to experts affects the intensity of pesticide application by farmers. The conventional agriculture is prevailing in all provinces and access to bio-pesticides highly limited to Tehran. Totally 29 pesticides were used against different fruit pests in Iran. The most damage intensities occurred by pests in province scale and weeds in regional scale. The outbreak of secondary pest Tetranychus urticae as key one indicates human perturbations in Iran’s farming system. Tehran province enjoyed diverse apple cultivars contrary to other provinces, which are poor in diversification. The predominant outlook to choose a cultivar among apple growers was marketing.
Nachhaltigkeit der russischen Landwirtschaft - die Region Tambov und das Betriebsbewertungssystem RISE
(2017) Komzolova, Marina; Doluschitz, Reiner
Agriculture is currently being faced by great challenges. It must meet to the ever increasing demand for food and at the same time meet to the growing demand on product quality, use resources efficiently while simultaneously ensuring that environmental impact is reduced in the long run. For this reason, the concept of sustainable development and sustainable agriculture is becoming prominently important in the international discussions. The Sustainability aspect is becoming increasingly important in communicating with the society and in politics. Also, demand for sustainability is becoming stronger for agricultural enterprises. However, there is no universal agreement on what sustainable agriculture means. In Russia, a common understanding of sustainability and the sustainability concept in agriculture is also missing. The aim of this thesis is therefore to present a model for sustainable agriculture in general and for Russia in particular. The actual status of sustainable agricultural enterprises in Russia is not known. To comprehensively solve this issue, 20 agricultural enterprises in the Tambov region in Russia were surveyed and analyzed. For this purpose, RISE-program, an indicator-based method for holistic assessment of sustainability of agricultural production at the operational level, was applied. The improved version “RISE 2.0” evaluates the ecological, economic and social sustainability of agri-cultural production using ten indicators, each calculated from four to seven parameters. The results of the present work shows that all surveyed enterprises in the Tambov region have deficits in the ecological, social and economic areas. The overall RISE assessment showed that sustainability is limited by various aspects of soil protection, nutrient flow, plant protection and biodiversity, working conditions, quality of life as well as economic viability. The current subsistence strategy can be improved with regard to these areas. Using the RISE-assessment, it was found out that the ecological aspect of sustainability was particularly deficit in the surveyed enterprises, and especially in regard to land use. It was established that agricultural production had a very negative impact on the soil condition. This is why it is important to point out to the political decision-makers and farmers the economic consequences of soil degradation and support this with figures and concrete examples. Costs associated with soil quality degradation as a consequence of water erosion were also calculated in this thesis. Results of the present study indicate that the possible costs of soil quality degradation due to water erosion ranges from 8.5 to 8.8 million Euros per year in the Tambov region, 152 million Euros per year in the Volgograd region and 2.49 billion Euros per year in Russia. However, these figures are based on assumptions due to lack of quantitative and qualitative data. Yet, even rough estimates shows that increasing soil quality degradation leads to utility and social welfare losses in Russia and therefore the urgency to invest in sustainable land use. Several soil conservation measures have been developed and supported by agricultural research. The available methods of soil conservation are often not used. A cost-benefit analysis for soil conservation measures was carried out in this study. The study demonstrated that there are numerous possibilities to provide soil conservation through farming strategies without accruing high costs. These include soil-conserving tillage, use of organic fertilizers, intercropping plants for fertilization and use of grain legumes in crop rotation. The framework requirements (institutional, financial, political and knowledge management and the flow of information) for compacting land degradation in Russia were pointed out. Additionally, recommendations for agricultural practices, advice, administration and policy could be derived in order to improve on sustainability, and in particular, sustainable land use in the Russian agriculture. As was already indicated above, these measures have higher single operational benefits than associated costs. This should encourage managers to reduce prejudice against environmental specifications and to get them more involved in soil conservation. In the case of the farmers, they have to develop a “soil awareness” for the most important factors of production. Advisory organizations are recommended to improve on communications regarding soil conservation measures and to optimize on research findings implementation. Politicians and the administration must shape the Russian’s soil conservation political framework in order to spread the application of soil conservation measures. This can be achieved through direct support for the application of sustainable technologies. This encourages and leads to increased motivation in the use of environmentally-friendly techniques and practices.