Dr. Harald Schmidt
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Research in practice for practice
I came across Witzenhausen by chance in 1982. After training as a chemical-technical assistant, civilian service and the unsatisfactory start of studies at the University of Fine Arts (HBK) in Kassel, I was looking for a new professional perspective. Coming from the village and with a family connection to agriculture, studying agricultural economics was an option. I could reach Witzenhausen by bike from Kassel and was therefore the first choice for a visit. The charm of Witzenhausen on a sunny day in May, the subject of alternative farming methods - unique in Germany at the time - and the good student advice convinced me.
The required agricultural internship of one year before starting my studies seemed a high hurdle at first. I was lucky and joined a Bioland farm community where I was fully integrated into the work and farm life from day one. The internship had a great impact on my image of agriculture, on how I categorized the course content in my studies, and to this day on the direction of my research activities. Today, I consider a prior, extended internship or agricultural training to be an essential prerequisite for agricultural studies and essential for the practical relevance of trained agricultural academics.
From student to researcher
The moderate learning intensity in the studies left room for learning important key skills, e.g. renovating in a rural shared flat, extended study work or university political activities such as a university strike. Life in the small town of Witzenhausen with its close-knit social life within the small student body also seemed to me to increase motivation for intensive and in-depth cooperation during my studies. The combination of practice and study aroused in me early on the desire to scientifically investigate processes in the practice of organic agriculture and to understand about them. A three-year student research project on N-dynamics on practice fields was the first step. After my postgraduate studies in ecological environmental protection (comparable to today's master's degree), I supervised a long-term crop rotation and fertilization trial as part of an EU project for my doctorate - both also in Witzenhausen. Thereby I learned essential basics of scientific work and research operation.
From 1997 to 2003, I continued the scientific field trial work by working at the professorship for organic agriculture at the University of Giessen. There I was also intensively involved in teaching and worked on my first self-applied practical project.
Practice Research
Since 2004, I have been conducting projects as a project scientist - mostly at the Stiftung Ökologie & Landbau (SÖL). The disadvantage of being employed only for the duration of the project was and is more than compensated by the high degree of freedom and the implementation of self-designed projects. Both my own interest and the lack of research equipment at SÖL led me to develop research approaches based on investigations on practically managed fields. Topics included analysis of arable problems, description and testing of examples of livestock-less or no-till organic farming, and mechanical weed control in herb cropping (at Ökoplant e.V.). Since 2009, the focus of my projects has been mainly on the cultivation of legumes.
After 15 years of research in the field, I consider this scientific approach an important complement to classical field trial research. Although the results are often less precise, the approach also offers some advantages, e.g.: the development of results under practical conditions; the possibility to address questions that are difficult, costly or lengthy to investigate with field trials; the classification of research results in terms of their significance for practice as well as the detailed mapping of the spread of practical agriculture.
In retrospect, the intensive study period in Witzenhausen has contributed significantly to my interest in organic agriculture, the research direction I have taken and the perspective on agriculture.