Centre for Sustainable Cropping

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The Centre for Sustainable Cropping Platform was established in 2009 to test the long-term impacts of an integrated cropping system on whole-system sustainability.

We are developing a production system that addresses the three major global challenges facing agriculture today:

Food Security and human health – by adopting more resource efficient production systems, crop types, combinations and varieties, we aim to maintain yields and improve product quality
The Climate Emergency – by enhancing soil biophysical quality and reducing dependence on mineral fertiliser inputs, we can minimise pollution and losses through run-off, leaching, erosion and GHG emissions
The Biodiversity Crisis – by conserving arable habitats, diversifying field margins and beneficial in-field weed communities, and applying IPM strategies to reduce reliance on crop protection chemicals, we will enhance biodiversity, improve system resilience and promote the delivery of ecosystem services

The platform provides a whole systems framework for designing and testing cropping systems to optimise yield and environmental health for long-term food security. It is the first of its scale in the UK and provides an open research facility to test and demonstrate the economic, ecological and environmental trade-offs in sustainable land management over many decades.

A vitual tour of the Balruddery platform is available on this website.

The new handbook of simple, on-farm indicators is available to download.

The CSC is linked with uksoils.org, GLTEN and eLTER networks.

We welcome visitors and support collaborative projects through access to fields, datasets and archived material.

Please get in touch for more information.

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