| Summary: | Lithuania’s agricultural reform resulted in significant changes in land use, i.e. in the emergence of small individual farms. As a result, the formerly most popular 7, 8, 9-course crop rotations, or even 5-6-course crop rotations became inapplicable on small farms, especially on those not involved in animal production and cultivation of grass forage. Multiple-course crop rotations would disperse the same crops over several places, and the fields would not be unacceptably small. This is especially problematic for market farms, where it is intended to have 1-2-3 main crops and adequately alternate them. In foreign countries short rotations are a common practice in similar cases. However, in Lithuania short rotations have hardly been investigated, except for the sporadic research cases, therefore it is rather complicated to judge the feasibility of market crops growing in short rotations.
When the area of cereals is increased in a crop rotation, it is more difficult to choose preceding crops, and continuous growing of crops becomes inevitable. It is of special relevance here to maintain soil fertility, moreover, the adverse effects of crops concentration manifest themselves much more severely than in any other system, namely, heavy occurrence of weeds, diseases and pests, soil depletion and fatigue.
On cultivated Central Lithuania’s soils shortening of rotations and proper choice of preceding crops make it feasible to produce profitable, high quality agricultural production... [to full text]
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