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Planting rice seedlings |
Producing sufficient food with lower inputs while sparing the environment and nature. This is the challenge faced by scientists of Plant Research International for which they are developing new cropping systems and for which they are computing the cultivation-technical and socio-economic consequences.
A large part of the world population has not enough to eat. Production is insufficient or is insufficiently secure. Moreover, resources such as fertile soil or water are, or will become, scarce. With an increasing world population this increases the need for the introduction of new cultivation systems that require lower inputs, or make it possible to increase production, or enable a more effective use of poor soils.
Our scientists are using quantitative analyses for the development of more effective cultivation systems. They compute the need for land, nutrients and water, and how much yield is to be expected in a certain region. This then provides the basis for determining whether a different cultivation system would be useful.
Wanted and unwanted changes
Changing a cultivation system may, however, have far-reaching, wanted and unwanted, technical and socio- economic consequences. Take rice cultivation for example. Our scientists have shown that cultivation is possible with half the amount of water. This may alleviate drinking water shortage in a region or the saved water can be used for the production of more rice. In traditional wet rice cultivation women were weeding by hand; drier cultivation allows mechanical weeding. And this is men’s work. Furthermore, the water not required by the rice crop should be available at the right time. This makes farmers dependent on institutions deciding when irrigation water will be available. Together with other disciplines our scientists are analysing all these types of consequences to make sure that the agro-technical improvements do indeed result in an improvement for the population.
Model analyses and practical solutions are mutually supportive. Quantitative analyses indicate the directions of the solutions while field knowledge is used to convert global insights into practical solutions.
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