ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Agroecological Cropping Systems
Comparison of organic versus conventional farming – results from long-term lysimeter studies
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Soil System Science, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HZ), Halle, Germany
- 2Helmholtz-Zentrum fur Umweltforschung UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
- 3Landesanstalt fur Landwirtschaft und Gartenbau Sachsen-Anhalt, Bernburg, Germany
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Organic farming (OF) has established itself as an alternative to conventional farming. Currently, there are only a few results from long-term studies examining the effects of OF on the environment and agriculture. The effects of organic soil cultivation were investigated in a 32-year long-term experiment (from 1991 to 2023 using non-weighable gravity lysimeters, taking into account the known limitations of this method, and compared with agriculture based on Best Management Practices (BMP) cultivation principles with regard to nitrogen leaching via seepage and other parameters, such as yield, nitrogen uptake, and nitrogen use efficiency. Compared with BMP, OF showed an average annual increase of 25 mm in seepage volume over the long term. Nitrogen concentrations in seepage water did not differ significantly between the two farming systems. The annual N load (median) was significantly higher for OF at 26.1 kg ha-1 than for BMP (20.5 kg ha-1). In contrast, the OF lysimeters showed a 35% reduction in long-term dry matter yield. The organic management practiced here must be optimized to avoid long-term increases in N emissions. To achieve this, soil tillage intensity must be reduced, fallow periods during the vegetation-free season avoided, and the ploughing of legumes in the fall obviated, as this can be associated with high N mineralization losses. The main challenge in increasing the share of OF in agricultural management systems is to enhance OF productivity by increasing yields and improving yield stability.
Keywords: Conventional farming, land use, long-term lysimeter study, Nitrogen, Organic farming, seepage
Received: 15 Dec 2025; Accepted: 10 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 RUPP, Tauchnitz and Meissner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Holger RUPP
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