Data for greater biodiversity

The development may be quite timely right now as the EU is currently renegotiating the objectives of its Common Agricultural Policy for the period from 2027 onwards. A considerable amount of money is at stake here for German agriculture, which currently receives about six billion euros per year from the European Commission. Results-oriented allocation of subsidies is under scrutiny in the current negotiations, and its future is as yet uncertain. Nevertheless, farmers may wish to adapt their farms to operate in harmony with animals and nature either way. Monitoring systems can support them in this effort by directly reflecting the results of any individual measure.
Based on this, the LIB conducts a number of projects that are closely linked, as Prof Dr Christoph Scherber, deputy director general of the LIB’s Bonn site, explains. He mentions the “PhenoRob” Cluster of Excellence, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; the German Research Foundation) that develops new cultivation methods for agricultural land and provides monitoring systems. The name is short for “Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production”. One example development involves cameras with motion detectors that will only take a picture when insects are on a flower. This may significantly reduce the amount of data collected as compared to that of predecessor systems. The first funding phase of “PhenoRob” was from 2019 to 2025, while the second phase is due to continue until the end of 2032. Christoph Scherber was involved in the project during the first phase already, though he had no allocated funds of his own yet then. He has become a project leader for phase two.
He also sees great promise in a research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture that was active in the scope of the federal “Biological Diversity” programme from 2020 to 2025. “FINKA” refers to the promotion of insects in arable farming. Thirty pairs of farms developed joint strategies for reducing pesticide use, as Christoph Scherber explains. “We monitored the project for five years from a scientific point of view. This has enabled us to demonstrate some positive effects,” says the LIB researcher. A greater range of flowering plants were growing, greatly benefitting insect populations. Farmers’ yields were barely impacted by the measures, though they did decrease slightly. At the same time, however, farmers’ expenses for chemical pesticides dropped as well since weeds were controlled naturally, e.g., by hoeing or harrowing. The time investment and economic benefits will need to be balanced out well for farmers to accept this path as an option, as Christoph Scherber emphasises: “Policy decisions may help to create important incentives here.”

Challenges for agriculture

Dr Martin Berg, scientific coordinator at the Wiesengut campus of the University of Bonn – an organic farm with 60 hectares of arable land and 20 hectares of grassland – refers to this field of tension as well. The Wiesengut is the site for Ameli Kirse to conduct monitoring for the “BioMonitor4CAP” project. Today, she is introducing him to the options farmers have for working with the LIB’s monitoring systems and the flexibility of the devices used. Special audio recorders can capture more than merely bird calls. Some are even able to record insect wingbeats. Artificial intelligence may help analyse this data to assess insect diversity: “Research on this is still underway, however,” as Ameli Kirse explains.
Martin Berg pays close attention as Ameli Kirse explains the current state of research to him in the field. He runs the Wiesengut as an organic farm, focusing on sustainable use of natural resources anyway.
He believes that a systemic approach should become part of the funding to create incentives for operating farms more sustainably overall, just as organic farming does. “Policymakers wouldn’t need to subsidise individual measures if a fundamental underlying principle were in place.” Specifically, this would mean that breeding grounds for birds do not need to be reserved in fields specifically since they would develop naturally either way. The individual measure would lose its high relevance. Organic farming thus benefits where success can be documented and linked to subsidies.
Whether it will be possible to increase biodiversity and protect it permanently is not solely the responsibility of a single farm, however, as Cora Petrick argues. She is the theme manager for the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy at Agora Agrar, a think tank to bridge the gap between science and politics and translate scientific findings into specific actionable items. “If the next farm over refuses to cooperate, or even counteracts the efforts, a farmer would be unable to benefit from results-oriented funding.” This issue makes Cora Petrick advocate for cooperative approaches that go beyond the individual farm to plan and implement measures at the landscape level.