Context

Conservation Agriculture consists of a series of cultivation practices with the objective of assuring a sustainable and stable productivity and, at the same time, preserving and strengthening agricultural resources and the environment. The principles on which it is based are:

• minimum soil disturbance by the processes
• permanent covering of the soil surface
• crop diversification

Life HelpSoil project aims at demonstrating, in particular, that the application of these techniques:

• is possible and sustainable for farms in the Po plain and in the nearby Alpine and Apennine foot-hills;
• guarantees the fundamental functions that the soil carries out for the environment, such as organic carbon sequestration, conservation of biodiversity and fertility, protection against erosion;
• improves the environmental performance of agriculture, reducing, for example, energy and water consumptions.

While the area of the project cover the entire Po Valley, one of the demonstration farm is within the Alpine Convention Space, near Cividale del Friuli, Udine region, Italy. The farm is located at the mouth of the valley of the Chiarò torrent in the plain where the foothills begin to fade into the river-glacial deposits of the Natisone that constitute the fundamental level of the plain.

The cultivated area is about 100 hectares, with several crops in rotation: alfalfa, corn, soybeans, autumn and winter cereals, sorghum, weeds, rapeseed and protein peas. About 60 milking heads and 80 in total. Shallow tillage (15-20 cm) without turning the soil. Non-irrigated. Selective herbicide on current corn, soybean, alfalfa crops. Insecticide treatments on rapeseed, possibly on barley and maize.

The fairly soil grain size of the soil, with a considerable silty component on the surface, can induce a moderate risk of surface fouling, which leads to a moderate protective capacity against surface water.

The initiative

Within the project, innovative techniques for irrigation, distribution of zootechnical effluents and defense of the cultures will be tested along and combined with the practices of Conservation Agriculture.
The project combined several actions :

1. Preparatory actions that aimed at the description of threats for soils and environmental problems, at identifying demonstrative farms and at characterizing productive arrangements and soils.
2. Implementation actions that intended to implement innovative and improved soil management plans inside demonstrative farms, in order to compare the results with the current situation.
3. Monitoring actions that aimed at detecting agronomic, technical-management and soil functionality data along with those related to agro-environmental performances of the techniques implemented in the demonstrative farms (irrigation, fertilization, pest management, erosion control).
4. Dissemination and communication actions that intended to reach – through an adequate initiative mix (website, open farm days, newsletters, seminars and conferences) – a wide number and type of relevant stakeholders (farmers, private and public technicians, citizens, institutions).
5. Management and monitoring actions related to the project progress, through a strong role of the project leader in the control and direct intervention in all the project activities.

Results, limits and enable factors

The experiments lead in the different demonstrative farm illustrate the success of conservation agriculture for:

• i) producing comparable crop yields than in conventional agriculture;
• ii) strongly reducing the fuel consumption;
• iii) increasing the soil biodiversity

The demonstration approach of the project will increase the awareness of the environmental issues related to agriculture and will spread the knowledge among farmers.