Cymraeg These page looks at how on-farm diversity limits pesticide use, supports soil health, mitigates climate change and ultimately creates economic resilience.
9 Key-Concepts For Food Diversity – pdf leaflet
This leaflet explains nine important concepts that underpin the DIVERSIFOOD project’s efforts to enhance food diversity. It provides clear definitions for commonly used terms such as food diversity, quality and sustainability. These terms are contextualised within a vision of agriculture that also promotes food democracy, co-evolution, community management and participatory research.
The term ‘resilience’ is at the heart of this leaflet, and describes the robustness of agroecological farming systems; systems that are able to withstand and recover quickly from economic, social, environmental, and political challenges. Read it here.
Diversity in plant breeding: leaflet summarising info about ORC Wakelyns Population – pdf
Organic crop production requires plant varieties that are resistant to disease, competitive against weeds and effective at scavenging for nutrients. This leaflet summarises information about the ORC Wakelyns Population. The organic wheat population was launched in July 2015 as a result of an evolutionary breeding programme pioneered by the Organic Research Centre (ORC).
The leaflet sets the ORC Wakelyns Population in context with sections on breeding for organic/low input systems, the importance of diversity, defining what a ‘population’ is, and describing the ‘buffering effect.’ It then goes on to explain how the Population was bred, the qualities that distinguish it, the marketing of it, and where you can buy it. Access it here.
Herbal Lets Virtual Field Day, 2 parts – video
Multi species herbal leys combine complementary grass, legume and herb species. A more diverse sward can provide greater resilience to climate extremes, benefits for animal health, soil quality and biodiversity. This i2-part series of virtual events that provided an opportunity to share the latest findings and practical experiences, bringing together farmers, advisors and researchers to share ideas and experiences. Watch them here.
DIVERSify: Designing InnoVative plant teams for Ecosystem Resilience and agricultural Sustainability – webpage
Diverse crop systems can potentially enhance and stabilise crop yields, whilst providing greater resilience to environmental fluctuations and changes in management. The DIVERSify project aims to ‘optimise the performance of crop species mixtures or ‘plant teams’ to improve yield stability, reduce pest and disease damage, and enhance stress resilience in agricultural systems.’ It is focused on improving the productivity and sustainability of European agriculture using an approach that has global relevance, learning from the experience of international researchers and stakeholders. You can find out more here.
Intercropping and Companion Cropping in Arable Systems Field Lab Report 2018-19 – pdf
This field lab was created in light of the Organic Research Centre’s DIVERSify project. Interested farmers first met in June 2017 to discuss opportunities for intercropping to provide more efficient resource use, reduced pest and disease pressure, and better weed competition. In 2018/19 group members tried out different mixtures and shared their experiences on WhatsApp and at field events. This final report details what they grew, how the trials were set up, how the data was collected and analysed, and results in relation to crop performance and pests, disease and weeds. Access it here.
DIVERSify Guide for Farmers and Agronomists – webpage
This webpage summarises key results from the intercropping research carried out through the DIVERSify project, focussing on 3 ‘areas of interest’: 1) agronomy, 2) resilience and ecosystem services, and 3) practical experiences and innovation. Each area is divided into 5 key topics; when you first land on the page you get a snapshot of an explanation of the topic along with an image or/ and video and the option to ‘learn more’ by accessing a factsheet exploring the topic; synthesising outcomes and including information on experiments and trials and research results and considerations. Check it out here.
Barriers and enablers of of intercropping and enhanced crop diversification in the UK – pdf
The barriers and enablers of enhanced crop diversification were investigated by LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) through workshops and case studies undertaken as part of three separate collaborative projects in 2019–2020. This short paper reveals the main enablers and barriers and concludes that in order to increase the uptake of intercropping and enhanced crop diversification on a larger scale in the UK, effective knowledge exchange is required. Read it here.
Cereal-legume intercropping: basic principles in practice – pdf
Intercropping can deliver economic and environmental gains due to increased resource-use efficiency, often greater total yield and improved quality. This short flyer from the Soil Association suggests practices to evaluate and test cereal-legume intercopping on your farm. Check it out here.
