A trilling lark, the hum of a honeybee, a duck’s contented “quack”… Nature’s symphony is a beautiful sound, but it is one that man’s development sometimes threatens to silence. Today, border strips and other farmscaping features are helping to ensure that “the music plays on”. Hedgerows and uncultivated areas around fields provide havens for small birds and beneficial insects. And the benefits are worth singing about.
The world’s human population continues to increase, and with it the use of land for building houses or factories. More people to feed also mean more intensive farming on the available fields. Urbanization and other pressures continue to compromise the natural habitats of many types of wildlife.
Now farmers in some countries are using border strips to reverse that trend. These areas of land on the edge of crops provide a home for wildlife diversity. There is, however, much more to this approach than just leaving a field margin fallow. Farmers – stewards of their land – also use a variety of environmental measures to attract and support beneficial wildlife like insects, bats, and birds of prey. Water reservoirs, perennial grasses, flowering plants, and low-growing trees and shrubs all play a role. The resulting border strips are one part of deliberate overall integrated pest management (IPM). This method helps maintain diversity and keep agriculture sustainable..
Bees enjoy a sweet solution
Nectar is the building-block for insect biodiversity, and crucial for the bee - one of nature's most important pollinators. It is also, for example, big business in France.
There are an estimated 70,000 beekeepers across France. They maintain about 1.35 million hives. However, a lack of flowering plants and pollen has left many French honeybees going hungry through the key months of June to August. This is precisely when they should be laying down crucial food reserves for the winter - and commercial honey stocks for beekeepers.
Syngenta has reacted to the decline in honey productivity. In 2003, the company initiated a project to investigate sources of pollen and nectar on arable farms, and to help redress the shortfall. These activities focused on farms selected for “Réseau Agéris“, a Syngenta sustainable agriculture initiative. Initial pollen collections there revealed that the standard open-field arable system was proving inadequate for beekeeping.
The Syngenta project teams up farmers with beekeepers and other experts. Together, they have shown that planting non-cropped areas with nectar-rich flowers brings tangible benefits. This farming practice provides the necessary food sources for honey production and a healthy insect population. Good flowers to use on French farms are sainfoin, mustard, buckwheat and Phacelia. Sowing grasses and clover along field borders also helps, as do hedges including rose species. Worker bees quickly find an area of “set-aside” as small as 0.3 hectare. Flowering food sources there provide sufficient supplements for hives installed on a 200ha farm.
The project has proved so successful that the number of demonstration farms has doubled in three years. Training for farmers and advisors covers topics like environmental management to enhance and improve biodiversity. It also details the safe use of crop protection products to mitigate risk to foraging bees. The aim is to cultivate the land so as to provide the 30 to 50kg of pollen that each bee colony requires, along with 100kg of nectar for honey production. In doing so, farmers create healthier hives better able to cope with disease and harsh winters. These hives in turn produce more honey for beekeepers and consumers.
Keeping waterfowl in the swim
Border strips can also benefit “off-farm” animals. In the Chesapeake Bay area of North America, for example, enhancing grass buffer zones improves the habitats for ducks.
Traditionally, the clean waters of Chesapeake Bay provided an ideal home for millions of migrating wildfowl, along with more than 2500 other native species. Over the years, however, approximately half the wetlands and associated forest-buffered streams around the Bay were lost. Waterfowl populations declined by 70 to 80%, according to wetland conservationists at the charity Ducks Unlimited.
Now, working with selected farmers, Syngenta and Ducks Unlimited have taken the first steps to reverse this decline. The key is restoring native warm-season grass buffers alongside upland ditches, streams and fields. The buffers use up nitrogen, and prevent it from reaching groundwater. They also collect soil particles before they can pollute the Bay.
Another, related problem in many U.S. wetlands is that non-native and harmful weeds force out important indigenous plants. Through its work with Ducks Unlimited, and other current research, Syngenta has shown that herbicides can play a key role in controlling the weeds and allowing desirable native species to flourish. These provide essential food and cover for waterfowl and other wildlife.
For more information on Ducks Unlimited, visit www.ducks.org. More information about these wildlife preservation projects, and an overview of the extensive Syngenta stewardship activities, will soon be available here on www.syngenta.com.
