Anja Vieweger

Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau | FiBL · Department of Crop Sciences

Societies’ calls for addressing the urgent problems of climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental crises are becoming ever louder. Responding to this, and to the growing severity of global threats to agricultural and food systems, national and international research funders are increasingly demanding that funded projects achieve real...

This article concerns the organic movement's aim to promote health across the entire farm system as outlined by the IFOAM Principle of Health (IFOAM 2005). It discusses the implementation of Health by organic farmers in Austria, Germany and the UK. Results from an international survey and a series of workshops on health promoting strategies and pri...

The project 'Developing best practice networks of health in organic agricultural systems' aimed to create an international network of farmers and scientists to jointly develop new and interdisciplinary approaches to health measurement and research in ecological agriculture. The project identified personal philosophies and statements of best practic...

Members of the organic supply chain need high-quality data to make correct investment decisions, but data with sufficient depth and quality are not widely available in Europe. The quality of available data is a key concern for both data collectors and data users. The aim of this study is to identify whether the commonly used quality attributes (acc...

We aim to create an international network of farmers and scientists to jointly develop new and interdisciplinary approaches to health measurement and research in ecological agriculture. First, to establish common ground, we identified personal principles and strategies of best practice that make organic farmers successful in running healthy farm sy...

Organic farming adoption is on the rise in many countries, due to the increased awareness of farmers, citizens, governments and other stakeholders of its more sustainable nature. Various studies have investigated the socio-economic drivers (e.g., consumer demand, support measures, agricultural policies) of organic farming adoption, but less attenti...

Abstract and Conclusions Categorising existing tools and searching for new insights. This handbook mainly reports on the first-hand experience the authors and members of the COST action have with sustainability assessment tools. This booklet is not a comprehensive review of all tools available and there are further tools which could not be covere...

LUPG Disclaimer This report was produced by the authors on behalf of the Land Use Policy Group (LUPG). The views expressed within the report are those of the contractors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the agencies within LUPG.

To promote and maintain health in agricultural and food systems, appropriate criteria are needed for the description and assessment of the health of soils, plants, animals, humans and ecosystems. Here we identify the concept of resilience as a universally applicable and fundamentally important criterion of health in all relevant areas of agricultur...

In agriculture and food systems, health related research includes a vast diversity of topics. Nutritional, toxicological, pharmacological, epidemiological, behavioural, sociological, economic, and political methods are used to study health in the five domains of soils, plants, livestock, humans, and ecosystems. An idea developed in the early foundi...

In the past, aspects of health in agricultural contexts have mainly been discussed in separate discourses within soil, plant, animal and human medical science, with little interaction or communication among these disciplines. The questions “What is health?” and “How can health be measured?” have not been discussed in a holistic and integrated way....

The paper reports the results of the evaluation of the research programme of the German Federal Scheme for organic Agriculture. The main aim of the evaluation was to assess the relevance and impact of the research in relation to program goals. Recommendations presented are relevant to other applied research programmes targeted at the development of...

To promote and maintain health in agricultural and food systems, appropriate criteria are needed for the description and assessment of the health of soils, plants, animals, humans and ecosystems. Here we identify the concept of resilience as a universally applicable and fundamentally important criterion of health in all relevant areas of agricultur...

The challenges of growing organic onions (Allium cepa) are the strong weed competition (hand weeding as the main cost factor) and quality problems with the traditional cultivation system of planted onion sets (e.g., due to poor skin firmness and propagation material-borne diseases). Although weed control is easier in planted onion sets than with di...

In organic vegetable growing, nitrogen fixing green manure (GrM) plays a key role in nitrogen supply for the crops. We investigated in two field experiments the influence of cutting and soil incorporation of GrM on nitrogen delivery for the proceeding crop cabbage. As a standard procedure, the GrM was mulched just before soil incorporation. In the...

Winterbegrünungen sind im ökologischen Landbau – insbesondere im viehlosen Anbau – wichtige Quellen für Stickstoff und tragen zur Erhaltung der Bodenfruchtbarkeit bei. Auf Praxisbetrieben wurden in zwei Versuchen die Auswirkungen von Gründüngungs-, Winterbegrünungs- und Untersaatverfahren auf die N-Dynamik und den Ertrag der jeweiligen Nachfolgekul...

Gründüngungen sind wichtig zur Versorgung des Bodens mit Humus und Stickstoff. Sie vermindern das Auswaschen der Nährstoffe sowie die Oberflächenerosion und können das Unkrautwachstum unterdrücken. Die Biorichtlinien fordern neu, als Ersatz zum Bodenschutzindex, einen Mindestanteil Gründüngungen, der entweder ganzjährig oder über den Winter angebau...

Green manuring is an important tool in organic vegetable growing by fixing nitrogen, recycling nutrients in the rotation, and maintaining soil fertility through adding organic matter. The aim of this project was to optimise the incorporation of different green manure mixtures and to optimise green manuring during winter after vegetable crops with a...

Schlüsselwörter: Mykorrhiza, ökologischer Landbau, Inokulation, Gemüsebau, Zier- pflanzenproduktion Abstract: The mycorrhizal symbiosis plays a major role in plant nutrient acquisition, pathogen control and soil stabilisation in land use systems with a low input of external re- sources. The use of inocula of mycorrhizal fungi for the development of...

An zwei Standorten wurden in Zusammenarbeit von FiBL, FAW und FAL zwei Versuche zur Optimierung von Gründüngungen im Gemüsebau angelegt. Die Untersaaten Erdklee und Kleegras (inkl. Spontanvegetation) bedeckten den Boden bis zu 80 %. Durch diese Biomasse wurde der Lauchertrag im Vergleich zur Kontrolle ohne Untersaat nicht unterdrückt. Von den erhob...