Crop Diversity
The Right Way
Building soil is one of the basics in of successful farming. We enhance soil life through minimum tillage and by growing plants in the right succession, otherwise known as crop diversity.
Every plant has its own “friends and enemies,” in the soil or above. Changing the crops in a certain rotation minimizes the risk of large attacks of bugs and viruses.
Our Land
In countries like Holland and Scotland, 80% of the Koepon land base is pasture – mostly permanent with a small area of short-ley.
In Poland, lucerne, forage maize, sorghum, soya beans, and hay are grown in rotation with wheat, rape, barley and sugar beet.
On the organic farm in Germany, crops include grass-clover mixes (25% of all hectares as forage or cover crop), lucerne, red clover, white lupines, field beans, maize, wheat, barley, and rye. The clover, lucerne, lupines, and beans not only take nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil, but they also are a perfect feed for our dairy cows.
In return, the manure from our animals feeds the soil with very valuable nutrients. What more could nature ask for?