Interactive tool for farmers to diversify high-latitude cereal-dominated crop rotations

Agricultural landscapes have become more intensive and monotonous, which may further increase biodiversity loss. Even though Finnish rural landscapes are often heterogeneous, crop choices and rotations lack diversity. The aim of this study was to develop an interactive, multi-step crop rotation tool, which acknowledges farmer’s preferences in land allocation for different crops depending on farm and field parcel characteristics. The tool was developed to provide as diverse a 5-year crop rotation plan as possible on the field parcel scale for the farmer’s consideration. The tool is flexible and interactive in the sense that it allows a farmer to include or exclude crops and spatially and temporally rearrange them to improve farming logistics. The tool was tested in southern-western Finland with the highest potential for diverse crop choices and sequencing. Test-runs indicated that the tool was powerful in proposing diversified crop rotations: the shares of current monotonous cereal-based rotations collapsed. The final diversification plan always lies in the farmer’s hands, who may exclude crop choices and even end up in cereal monoculture rotations. The tool provides estimates on farm economics for each step of the planning process. The tool will be available for all Finnish farmers (∼48,000) on the EconomyDoctor-portal with personal access only and the background information is automatically updated annually.

农业景观正日趋集约化与单一化，这可能进一步加剧生物多样性丧失。尽管芬兰乡村景观通常具有较高异质性，但农户的作物选择与轮作模式仍缺乏多样性。本研究旨在开发一款交互式多步骤作物轮作工具，该工具可依据农场与田块的特征，兼顾农户在不同作物土地分配上的偏好。本工具旨在田块尺度上生成尽可能多元的五年轮作方案，供农户参考。该工具兼具灵活性与交互性：农户可自行选择纳入或剔除特定作物，并在空间与时间维度上调整作物排布，以优化农业生产调度。本工具已在芬兰西南部——该区域具备开展多样化作物选择与轮作的最优潜力——开展测试。测试结果显示，该工具在生成多样化轮作方案方面成效显著：当前单一化谷物主导轮作的占比大幅下滑。但最终的多元化种植方案仍由农户自主决策，其可剔除部分可选作物，甚至最终仍采用谷物单一种植轮作模式。该工具可在规划流程的每一环节提供农场经济核算估算值。本工具将仅通过EconomyDoctor门户网站面向全体芬兰农户（约4.8万户）提供个人账户专属访问权限，且后台基础数据将每年自动更新。