At this point, I would like to share a thought that has been occupying and fascinating me for some time now. And, of course, I am not the only one, this thought seems to be “in the air”. Nonetheless, I think that a good combination of practical farming issues with ecological and economic theory is missing. Biological diversity and agroecological approaches are seen in agriculture as a counter-model to the rationalized and industrial agriculture. Agro-industrial systems are usually functionally specialized and optimized for the production of specific agricultural goods. Due to their optimization for the production of one or a few goods, they are not only specialized in their function (monofunctional) but also their ecological structure is greatly reduced in its complexity. This means that industrial agricultural systems are extremely simplified agricultural systems, which in popular everyday language is then referred to as monocultures. Indeed, biological diversity does not fit into the optimization of specialized agro-industrial production systems. This observation may not be new, but it is of fundamental importance.
A blind spot in agroecology: economies of scale and ecological complexity
The criticism of industrial agriculture and its consequences for our climate, animal welfare and biodiversity is widely known. Countless scientific analyses explain them through high inputs of nutrients, pesticides and large-scale monocultures. Although this model of causal relationships is factually correct, it is based on a linear understanding in which industrial agriculture is the cause of a number of problems in our agricultural ecosystems. However, such simple cause-and-effect models ignore the much more complex socio-ecological interactions in agriculture.
Above all, such a linear model is in no way helpful in explaining agroecological transformation processes or the resilience of industrial agriculture to transformation. The comparison between “industrial” and “agroecological agriculture” is also understandable from an activist perspective and perhaps also necessary in terms of strategic communication. However, this harbors the danger of simple dichotomies that do not do justice to the complexity of our world in any way and therefore make it difficult to find technically sound and practically relevant solutions.
On the one hand, a more precise socio-ecological model of our agriculture is of a purely academic and knowledge-oriented interest. A central question is how biological diversity and economic efficiency in agriculture are linked. However, this question is also central to the concern of critics of industrial agriculture to reform this system or, as is often postulated, to radically transform it.
For this reason, I would like to try to take a more differentiated approach to the relationship between biodiversity in a production system such as agriculture and aspects of economic efficiency. Since I am not an economist I do stretch beyond my usual expertise, however the attempt to address interdisciplinary problems makes this unavoidable. This article is an translation from an older German version.
Continue reading A blind spot in agroecology: economies of scale and ecological complexityIntercropping in practice: insufficient data and a positive trend in NRW (Germany)?
If you look at the world of science, mixed crops – also called intercrops – are one of the hot topics at the interface between agriculture and ecology. Great hopes are being placed in this cultivation system. The topic of intercrops has also made it into the top scientific journals, e.g. with an exciting study on yield performance in PNAS by a colleague from Wageningen University.
But what is actually going on in agricultural practice? Is any of the hype in the scientific community actually being put into practice? Or is science researching a system that does not meet the economic and technical requirements of agriculture and the value chain? Can intercrops really be established well in our different farms, soils, climates and regional markets?
Continue reading Intercropping in practice: insufficient data and a positive trend in NRW (Germany)?Cereal variety mixtures to reduce pesticide use: the GDR and European countries as inspiration
It’s interesting: many things in science are repeating. Scientists with some experience know the game. Old research topics are dug up again, reworked and hyped as if they were something completely new. There can be really good reasons to recycle old research ideas. Cereal variety mixtures in agriculture are one of these topics. The effects of variety mixtures in reducing plant diseases such as fungi have been known for a long time and the underlying mechanisms are also mostly understood. This knowledge can be found, for example, in the writings of Martin Wolfe (Wolfe 1985), a wonderful review by Maria Finckh (Finckh et al. 2000) or a meta-analysis of Danish variety trials (Kristoffersen et al. 2020).
Variety mixtures that are intended to suppress plant diseases are mixed from varieties that have similar agronomic characteristics (such as uniform ripening) but differ in their resistance genes. On the one hand, this reduces the spread of diseases in crops through reduced host density and barrier effects. On the other hand, the evolutionary race of breeding new resistance genes and development of new virulences in pathogens is slowed down. Monocultures exert strong selection pressures on pathogens, so that resistance genes carried by the plants are quickly overcome. Diverse mixtures of varieties, on the other hand, exert divergent selection pressures that make it more difficult for pathogens to adapt. The development of varietal mixtures is also being taken up again in the current literature and spun further, including provocative considerations of combining them with new genetic engineering methods (Wuest 2021).
This naturally raises the question of why a seemingly effective system is not used in farming practice. It is interesting to look at case studies that show how such a system could be implemented. If there are such cases, either in other places or at other times. And indeed, there is a relatively prominent example that Maria Finckh mentions in her paper. Skadow and Zimmermann (1987) describe in their essay in even more detail how variety mixtures were used to a considerable extent in the GDR. In 1987, according to the authors the proportion of malting barley grown as a mixture of varieties was around 60%. This was made possible by cooperation between the brewing industry, breeding research and the breeding industry. Table 1 in their article shows four of the variety mixtures approved at that time. These mixtures were called varieties, in this case Ami, Bemi, Cemi and Demi (figure below).

Each of these mixtures contained at least four different varieties with different resistance genes for mildew. The development of the variety mixtures was probably a reaction to the pressure of mildew on malting barley. I don’t have the detailed knowledge at this point, but I assume that plant protection products were not so readily available in the GDR and therefore the idea of variety mixtures was well received. In addition, there were no private breeding companies, but breeding was organized by the state. Herewith, I do not want to make the statement that public organization of breeding is generally better than private breeding. The variety mixtures developed in a very specific economic and historical context. Skadow and Zimmermanm also describe strategies to reduce the use of pesticides for ecological and economic reasons by means of variety mixtures. However, they also mention the difficulty of implementing such integrated measures in practice.
Against the background of the ecological problems in today’s agriculture, the question arises as to whether it would not be worth (another) attempt to test variety mixtures under today’s conditions. This test would not primarily be a test of whether variety mixtures work, but how their development could be carried out technically, in terms of breeding and organized economically. Of course, this would again require cooperation between breeding, research and the malting industry, in Germany and beyond. The question raised here is whether commercial breeding is to much intertwined with the chemical industry that naturally has no interest in reducing the use of their products. Simple accusations of an “evil industry”, however, are way too simple and not really useful. Still, path dependency of the European agricultural system can hardly be denied.
Incidentally, other European countries have already made considerable progress. In France, wheat variety mixtures have already been widely used and there is a tool that allows wheat mixtures to be created that are adapted to specific disease combinations. I have also heard from my networks that variety mixtures have also come into practice in Denmark and Switzerland, where they can also be approved by state agencies similar to varieties.
