temporary grassland
The cultivation of leys within arable cropping systems has been touted as a key pillar of sustainable agriculture but is it? Take a deep-dive with us as we synthesize the evidence in the first systematic literature review on the subject.
Factsheet
- Schools involved School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences
- Institute(s) Agriculture
- Research unit(s) Grasslands and Ruminant Production Systems
- Funding organisation Others
- Duration (planned) 01.05.2024 - 31.05.2027
- Head of project Prof. Dr. Beat Reidy
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Project staff
Prof. Dr. Beat Reidy
Dr. Amy Birkinshaw -
Partner
Fondation Sur-La-Croix
Eric Schweizer AG
AGFF Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Förderung des Futterbaues - Keywords Ley, artificial meadow, temporary grassland, temporary pasture, crop rotation, arable land
Situation
Leys are temporary grasslands traditionally used for hay making or grazing that typically last between one and five years. The use of leys in arable crop rotations dates back to the Low Countries of Brabant and Flanders (now Belgium) in the sixteenth century where red clover was used to replace the fallow period in the standardized three-year crop rotation, revolutionizing it to a four-year rotation (Blom et al., 2006). In Switzerland too, leys have a long and strong tradition dating back to the eighteenth century. Grasses and clovers were routinely cultivated to replace the fallow period and improve the standardized three field system (Kapfer, 2010). Today leys provide the same array of benefits that they did centuries ago, these include improved soil structure and fertility, weed suppression and pest control while also providing high-quality feed for livestock. However, as agricultural production systems have simplified and intensified at both temporal and spatial level, the use of leys has dwindled while monocropping has flourished resulting in a range of negative consequences (Malisch et al., 2024). Losses of soil organic carbon and biodiversity have resulted in a strong dependency on external inputs, such as mineral fertilizers and specialized machinery, to maintain high arable crop production yields (Malisch et al., 2024).
Course of action
Much research has focused on the re-introduction of leys into arable crop rotations. However, most studies have focused on only one aspect of the puzzle such as nitrogen fixation and humus enrichment (Nyfeler et al., 2009, 2011) or increased soil organic carbon in topsoil and subsoil (Guillaume et al., 2022) or increased earthworm abundance, biomass and biodiversity (Hoeffner et al., 2023). While narrative reviews do exist (Malisch et al., 2024; Cooledge et al., 2022; Martin et al., 2020; Wortmann et al., 2020) there has not yet been an effort to synthesize the evidence of the effects of leys in arable crop rotations. Therefore, the aim of this project is to produce and publish a peer-reviewed systematic literature review that gathers and reports as much information as possible on the subject, in a platonic and unbiased manner, that may aid policy and decision making not only in Switzerland but also further afield.
