Division of Agronomy

Research Project ZERN – 2024 to 2029

Future of Nutrition in Lower Saxony - Cluster Arable farming, Subproject Modelling of crop rotations in Lower Saxony

Crop rotation planning is essential to adapt to changing climatic and socio-economic conditions in arable farming in Lower Saxony. The annually recurring possibility of choosing the crop to be cultivated distinguishes arable farming significantly from grassland or farms growing permanent crops, which have considerably less flexibility in terms of land use.
Until the “Green Revolution”, crop rotations have been essential in ensuring a sufficient supply of nutrients to the crops and for disease prevention. These aspects are still particularly relevant in organic farming today, which is why wide crop rotations with frequent alternation of leafy and cereal crops can still be found there. Crop rotations have also become more important in conventional farming in recent years due to the reduced availability of synthetic nutrients and incentives to reduce the use of pesticides. In addition, modified crop rotations also offers the possibility of adapting to climate change, e.g. by incorporating crops such as sorghum or soybeans.

The analysis of present crop rotations in Lower Saxony has shown that the crop rotations that exist in practice often deviate significantly from what would be expected according to established crop rotation theory, especially in the northwest of the state. There are many reasons for this, e.g. the fodder demand of the farms in regions with intensive livestock farming or for bioenergy production, lack of trafficability of the land at the intended sowing date or frost damage requiring to regrow another crop. However, a systematic analysis of crop rotations in Lower Saxony and the site conditions that determine them has so far been lacking, as have approaches to optimizing crop rotations as an adaptation measure to climatic and socio-economic changes.

Objectives of the sub-project
are the comprehensive analysis of present crop rotations and their suitability in Lower Saxony, the detection of factors that determine current crop rotations and the determination of suitable crop rotations under changing climatic and socio-economic conditions. The sub-project is divided into three work packages:

  • Work package 1: Analysis of existing crop rotations in the period since 2012 based on INVEKOS data
  • Work package 2: Modeling of crop development and yield for the most important crops in Lower Saxony
  • Work package 3: Adaptation of crop rotations based on scenarios for climate change and socio-economic changes


Project partners
The sub-project will work closely with the other sub-projects of the ZERN consortium. Due to the research objectives, there are synergies and the need for particularly close coordination with the following partners: