Farming by soil in Europe: status and outlook of cropping systems under different pedoclimatic conditions

BACKGROUND: Despite of the importance of soils in agronomy, to date no comprehensive assessment of cropping in Europe has been performed from the viewpoint of the soil variability and its relationship to cropping patterns. In order to fill this knowledge gap, we studied the cropping patterns in different soils of European climate zones with regards to the shares of their crop types in a comparative manner. The study highlights the main features of farming by soil in Europe. Farming by soil in this context means the consideration of soil characteristics when selecting crop types and cropping patterns. METHODS: We first assessed the dissimilarity between the cropping compositions of different pedoclimatic zones in Europe. Next, we assessed the differences of crop distribution in the climate zones by soil types and main crop types by analyzing the degree of association of crops to soil types. A detailed country scale assessment was performed using crops-specific soil productivity maps and land use survey data from Hungary. RESULTS: Results suggest that, in general, farmers consciously take pedoclimatic condition of farming into account when selecting their cropping patterns. In other words, farming by soil is a common practice in the different climatic regions of Europe. However, we have strong reasons to believe that soil suitability-based cropping is not practiced to its full potential over the continent. For example, the findings of our European assessment suggest that production areas of legumes are not always optimized for the local pedoclimatic conditions in some zones. These findings also underline that economic drivers are decisive, when farmers adopt their cropping (eg. oil crops on Albeluvsiols in Europe). Win-win situations of economic considerations and soil suitability based management are observed in all pedoclimatic zones of Europe. The country analysis shows that cropping is progressively practiced on more suitable areas, depending also the crop tolerance to variable pedoclimatic conditions In conclusion, we can assume that pedoclimatic conditions of cropping are respected in most of Europe and farmers crops according to edaphic conditions whenever economic considerations do not override the ecological concerns of farming.