"Organic Agriculture quo vadis?"

Organic is "in" - practically every supermarket chain today has an extensive range of organic foods on offer, and growth rates in the organic sector have been at 10 percent and more for years. So is this reason enough for organic farmers to look to the future with optimism?

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heß, head of the Department of Organic Agriculture & at the University of Kassel since 1998 and scientific director of the Frankenhausen domain, has been following and helping to shape the shift toward sustainable agriculture for decades, both as a scientist and as a policy advisor. In addition to the quantum leap that organic farming has made in the past 20 years, he also sees critical developments: "Organic tomatoes and organic peppers, for example, now come from Almeria in southern Spain, especially in the winter months - these vegetables do indeed meet the criteria for receiving an organic seal, but there is nevertheless a lot wrong with them." He cites intensive irrigation as one example: groundwater reserves are being overused, fossil water reserves are being depleted, and the neighboring Mediterranean Sea is being polluted with brine from seawater desalination. "But also the working conditions for the harvesters are often disastrous," Prof. Heß describes.

Specifically, in the province of Almeria, more than 36,000 hectares are covered with plastic film to grow vegetables year-round. The local nickname for this area is "mar de plastico," or plastic sea. The plastic waste pollutes the bird life and also the fish stocks of the Mediterranean Sea.

But even in Germany, Prof. Heß believes that not all that glitters with an organic seal is gold. "Of course, the increasing professionalization is also necessary in organic agriculture - but in some areas, in my opinion, the reasonable level has been exceeded," says Prof. Heß. In this context, he speaks of the "conventionalization of organic farming." What is meant by this is the ever-increasing pushing of the limits of guidelines and regulations in order to achieve similarly high yields as conventional farmers with increasing intensification. "Questions about fair working and trading conditions or about the ecological achievements of organic farming, for example in water protection, biodiversity and climate adaptation, could quickly be pushed into the background," fears Prof. Heß.

A robot to hunt snails

For Christian Höing, who like Prof. Heß works at the Department of Ecological Agricultural Sciences at the University of Kassel in Witzenhausen, however, mechanization also holds immense potential. He points to a study showing that at the beginning of the 20th century, one farmer produced food for about four people, while today one farmer can feed about 130 people.

Over the past three years, Höing has been working on a topic that seems somewhat bizarre at first glance, but which offers a glimpse into the possible future of agriculture: In the "MSR-Bot" project, he has worked with scientists and technicians to develop a self-driving robot that can hunt slugs autonomously. "Slugs can become a huge problem for farmers," Höing explains. "Especially in important crops such as rapeseed or wheat, slugs can cause great damage, even leading to the total failure of an arable crop," Höing continues.

Up to now, slug pellets have primarily been used to combat slugs, but this has several disadvantages, as Höing explains: "For one thing, the use of slug pellets is extremely dependent on the weather - so if it rains at the wrong time, the slug pellets will be washed away before they've even had a chance to take effect." In his view, however, another disadvantage is decisive: "Slug pellets are not selective - that means that they indiscriminately kill all slugs on the field. However, only very few slug species cause damage; the others are harmless beneficial insects that even have a positive effect on the ecosystem."

This is where his research project comes in: With the help of artificial intelligence and sophisticated sensor technology, Höing and his team have succeeded in developing a robot that not only travels autonomously in the field via GPS, but can also distinguish slugs from other snails. "To do this, we used differences in the reflection of light in different snail species," Höing explains.

As if that wasn't enough, the robot can not only detect slugs, but with the help of intelligent data processing, the robot can also detect so-called "slug hotspots," areas in the field where particularly large numbers of slugs occur. The robot then targets these hotspots and prevents the slugs from spreading to other areas.

As part of the project, the robot has been developed to the point where it is ready for use, and Höing and his team have even applied for a patent for the hotspot control system - but there is still a long way to go before series production is possible, as Höing explains. The challenges here are not just technical, however, but primarily political, says the mechanical engineer, who studied at RWTH Aachen University and has been working at the University of Kassel in Witzenhausen since 2013. "Currently, the case law is that the manufacturer of the machine is liable if the device causes unforeseen damage - of course, no manufacturer wants to take that risk."

Broadening the view

Prof. Dr. Tobias Plieninger is also convinced that the course must be set differently in agricultural policy. His research focuses on sustainability science and on the study of social-ecological systems at the landscape level - where he was among the world's most cited scientists in 2019 as a "Highly Cited Researcher." "In our research, we were able to determine, among other things, that intact landscapes contribute quite significantly to the mental and physical well-being of people," says Prof. Plieninger.

Prof. Plieninger, who holds a joint professorship at the Universities of Göttingen and Kassel, developed a series of recommendations with colleagues on how to preserve agricultural landscapes with high conservation value. "First, the value of intact landscapes must be recognized, and then the steps needed to preserve them can be financial, social, political or technical," says Prof. Plieninger. In his view, the prerequisite for such a paradigm shift is a move away from the current agricultural subsidies, which are not very effective, and a shift toward innovative incentive instruments. "We should reward farmers for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services for society at the level of entire agricultural landscapes. In this way, agricultural support would contribute to strengthening ecological, social and economic sustainability," says Prof. Plieninger, making a clear case for reform of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy.

The future of agriculture

For Prof. Heß, the two most innovative and sustainable developments in organic agriculture are currently "Solidarity Farming", or Solawi for short, and "Regenerative Farming".

In solidarity farming, private households bear the costs of a farm, in return for which they receive its harvest. This form of agriculture, also called "community-supported agriculture" (CSA for short), originated in the 1960s in Japan, where today up to a quarter of households participate in a teikei (German for "partnership"). In Germany, this concept is represented by Netzwerk Solidarische Landwirtschaft e.V. and has even made it into the coalition agreement of the current federal government. There it says: "We want to promote projects for regional value creation and marketing within the framework of model and demonstration projects (best practice), e.g. Solidarity Farming Network (Solawi)." Just ten years ago, there were only a handful of farms operating according to this model; today, there are nearly 300 registered farms and many more unregistered or in the process of being established, with a very strong upward trend.

Regenerative agriculture, as a further development of organic farming, focuses even more than established organic farming on soil building, animal welfare and social justice as a holistic approach.

Even if the approaches of increasing professionalization on the one hand and a broadening of the perspective on the other sometimes lead to conflicting goals, Professor Heß advocates a both-as-also approach: "At the moment, we need both, both a professional further development of classic organic farming, but also ideas such as solidarity farming and regenerative agriculture, because only in this way can we meet the enormous challenges of the 21st century and effectively tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity".