Institut für Pflanzenschutz in Gartenbau und urbanem Grün
Like the entire horticultural sector, open-air vegetable growing in Germany faces challenges that the industry and every company has to overcome. These are manifold and, due to the diversity and quantity, sometimes unmanageable and almost impossible for a single company to cope with. In terms of plant cultivation alone, there are changes for various cultivation measures due to amendments to European and national directives, e.g. in plant nutrition due to the adaptation of the Fertiliser Ordinance and material flow balance, as well as the dynamic authorisation situation in the approval of plant protection products in the various applications in open-air vegetable cultivation. Accordingly, cultivation measures for each crop must be scrutinised, reconsidered and adapted. Due to the wide range of crops and varieties, regional characteristics and specialities, which are characterised by the marketing form, landscape structure and field size, as well as a high added value per unit area, the challenges at regional and farm level are characterised by a high degree of individuality. To ensure a continuous harvest and supply to the sales market, the crops grown are planned in batches during the cultivation phase. To cope with the workload, some farms have invested in automation and increased efficiency. The investments require a corresponding willingness on the part of the farms to take risks, streamlining of the diversity of crops and varieties cultivated, consolidation of plots for large-scale cultivation and crop security in order to be able to cover the costs of harvesting and marketing the products. On the other hand, small farms with local and regional marketing in particular grow a wide variety of vegetable crops and niche products. In this way, they have built up a market and set themselves apart from the competition with a standardised product range grown on a large scale. In recent years, environmental factors have increasingly proven to be unreliable in addition to the dynamic framework conditions. These include the occurrence of extreme weather events with heavy rainfall or extreme drought, as well as the changing occurrence of known and the emergence of new diseases and pests. As part of integrated crop production, various preventative measures and investments are incorporated into cultivation planning and implemented at an early stage. In particular, with the necessary transformation of agriculture, open-air vegetable cultivation must be taken into account, for example to expand crop rotations, promote crop diversity and thus establish plant cultivation aspects across the board and in the regional agricultural ecosystem.
Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Regional Identity
