Conservation strips
permanent or temporary
little effort
Requirements
Strip width and length areal - linear:
Minimum width 5 m; annual rotation to other arable land is possible.
Site and soil conditions:
- dry, mesic or wet
- Sunny or shady
Costs:
Yield loss
Machinery requirements:
No additional
Implementation period:
at the same time as tilling the field, respect winter dormancy
Implementation
step-by-step instruction
1. Site selection
Suitable are
- Locations in open fields; along agricultural roads, along bodies of water and on sunny sides of rows of trees, hedges, copses, etc.
- especially less productive sites (e.g. very low-yielding and dry areas or heavily waterlogged areas where species such as the lapwing can be promoted)
- sites with known occurrences of rare arable weeds (e.g. lamb's succory, mouse tail, field larkspur, Large Venus's-looking-glass, field nigella)
Locations with larger occurrences of problem weeds such as couch grass or creeping thistle should be avoided!
strip size at least 5 m wide, up to 20 % of the acreage
- the wider the strip, the more effective the measure
Implementation
- Conservation strips are not cultivated. There is no sowing (including no crops), no fertilisation and no pest management
- An annual change to other fields is possible. Tillage is permitted if the field remains in the same location (activation of arable herbs).
Care
step-by-step instruction
Maintenance cutting
If the conservation remains in the same location, selective maintenance cutting may be carried out in sections the following year outside the closed season (1 April to 30 June).
- Cutting height approx. 20 cm
- No more than 70 per cent of the relevant conservation strip should be mown at any one time
- A second maintenance cut after harvesting the remaining arable land is possible
Winterruhe
Auf mind. 30 % des Schonstreifens sollte eine Winterruhe eingehalten werden. Es sollte erst ab dem 15. Februar des Folgejahres umgebrochen werden. Die übrigen Flächen können ab dem 15. Oktober umgebrochen werden.
Ecological impact
Buffer strips are used in particular to promote rare wild field herbs, such as field larkspur, field red campion and field pheasant’s eye, as well as animal species that depend on open areas, such as the skylark and the lapwing. No seeds are sown at all on buffer strips.
„Hinweise zur erfolgreichen Anlage und Pflege mehrjähriger Blühstreifen und Blühflächen mit gebietseigenen Wildarten“ (Fenchel et al. 2015)
Ackerwildkrautschutz in Sachsen-Anhalt: Leitfaden für die landwirtschaftliche Praxis (Stiftung Kulturlandschaft Sachsen-Anhalt 2022)
Lexikon: Schonstreifen (Stiftung Kulturlandschaft Sachsen Anhalt 2023)
Ackerbrachen schützen Feldvögel wirkungsvoll Long-term fallows rate best among agri-environment scheme effects on farmland birds—A meta-analysis (Staggenborg & Anthes 2022)
Merkblatt zu Schonstreifen (Hochschule Anhalt, 2021)
