Conventional and organic cropping systems at Suitia II: Crop growth and yield

Abstract

Crop yields between 1982 and 1988 are reported here as a part of a cropping system experiment carried out at Suitia, Southern Finland. The soil was silty clay. There were four conventional and four organic systems: conventional cropping systems for barley monoculture, cereal production, diverse plant production, or a cattle farm, and organic cropping systems either for plant production with or without composting, or for cattle farms with or without composting. The crop sequences were fixed by six-year rotations, carried out in two phases. There were great differences in yields between the years, and the organic cropping systems were more negatively affected by poor growing conditions than the conventional ones. In the organic systems, the barley yields in 1985 and in 1988 were 25 % of the yields obtained from conventional stands, when the latter yielded about 3 t/ha. In better years, barley in the organic plant production yielded 50 % of the yield obtained in conventional barley monoculture (6 t/ha). It was not possible to differentiate between the effects of two different causes the preceeding crop and annual variation. The yields obtained with ’organic’ winter wheat and oats (+ Vicia faba) were 40 % of those from the respective conventional pure stands. The clover-grass leys of the organic systems yielded as much as the conventional grass leys until they were destroyed by water and the resulting ice cover during winter. Compared to those of ‘conventional’ system, the ‘organic’ system gave annual mean yields of potato varying from 37 % of the 16 t/ha obtained conventionally to 48% of the 21 t/ha obtained conventionally. Barley variety was found to interact with cropping system in 1988, a year characterised by draught stress. In 1989, in a separate trial carried out on the same field, an interaction between soil wetness (location) and cropping system was observed. Wetness of soil in winter seemed to interfere more severely in the organic system than in the conventional one. Because the uncontrolled variation of the field itself as to topography and drainage makes the comparisons between the organic and the conventional systems somewhat biased and unreliable, these results should not be generalised to cover the overall question of yield level in organic cropping.