Organic Farming: Making Arable Farming More Resilient and Efficient
Organic farming combines yield stability with soil protection and resource conservation. Innovative cropping systems and precise mechanical techniques are key to maintaining soil fertility and reducing labour requirements as well as increasing farms’ adaptive capacity. The Organic Farming Spotlight at the DLG Feldtage 2026 presents three approaches with the potential to make organic arable farming more resilient and economically viable: ridge cultivation (ridge farming), camera‑guided hoeing, and mixed cropping (intercropping).
The Organic Farming exhibition area at the DLG Feldtage 2026 is aimed at all those interested in learning about current developments, methods and market trends in organic arable farming. Visitors will benefit from a compact overview of practical solutions for key challenges such as climate adaptation, mechanical weed control, soil fertility and labour efficiency.
The Organic Farming Spotlight brings together technology, cropping systems and expertise, enabling direct exchange with specialists. Visitors will gain impulses for on‑farm decision‑making, can compare methods, assess innovations and develop perspectives for the economically and ecologically sustainable further development of their farms.
Ridge Cultivation as a Response to Climate Change
One focus of the Organic Farming Spotlight is ridge cultivation as an adaptation strategy to climate change. Climate change influences organic farming, including longer dry periods, more frequent heavy rainfall events and rising temperatures. This leads, on the one hand, to uncertain water availability and early soil drying, while on the other hand increasing the risk of erosion. Soils lose structure and fertility more quickly, particularly due to compaction and surface sealing. For organic farming, this further intensifies the challenge of securing yields and product quality.
Ridge cultivation places the soil at the centre of the system. Permanent, non‑recompacted ridges create a loose, well‑aerated rooting zone that can be penetrated deeply by roots. Targeted deep loosening as an initial step breaks up compacted soil layers, promotes root development and improves capillary water movement. Sowing, crop care and weed control are carried out mechanically on the ridges using only a few multifunctional implements. Ridge maintenance deliberately disrupts capillarity at the soil surface and acts like a mulch layer to reduce evaporation.
This cropping system increases water‑holding capacity during drought and improves infiltration during heavy rainfall, thereby reducing erosion and waterlogging. Active soil life, the specific microclimate between ridge crest and furrow, and improved root penetration can significantly enhance nutrient availability, plant health and root performance. In practice, stable to significantly higher yields have been observed (up to 10% and more, and in some cases up to 30% for grain legumes), along with improved quality, such as higher protein contents, while simultaneously reducing diesel consumption and the number of field passes. Ridge cultivation can therefore offer organic farming a resilient, soil‑building system that effectively combines yield stability, resource efficiency and adaptation to extreme weather events.
Hoeing: Effective Weed Control in Cereals and Leaf Crops
Mechanical weed control is a key success factor in organic farming. At the same time, it is labour‑intensive – particularly in leaf and stem crops such as vegetables, sugar beets or cereals. A major bottleneck is the high demand for manual labour, especially within the crop row, which leads to difficult working conditions and high costs. Traditional methods such as harrowing reach their limits on heavy or crust‑prone soils and under high weed pressure. In order to improve labour efficiency, operational capacity and control effectiveness, precise, automated hoeing systems offer considerable potential.
Camera‑guided hoeing is based on highly accurate sowing as a basic prerequisite: straight rows, uniform seed placement and level soil conditions are crucial. Camera systems detect crop rows (and in some cases individual plants) and control the hoeing tools precisely between – and increasingly also within – the rows via a lateral shifting frame. Depending on the system, hoe guidance is controlled by optical sensors, AI‑based image recognition, ultrasonic sensors or satellite‑based guidance. This allows hoeing operations to be carried out at higher speeds and with minimal distance to the crop. The system has proven particularly effective with adapted row spacings and in combination with other measures, such as hoeing followed by harrowing. Limitations may arise depending on the technology used under conditions of very dense crop stands, strong shading, dust, wind or insufficient soil visibility.
The key advantage of camera‑guided hoeing technology lies in its significantly higher precision: the closer weeds can be controlled without damaging the crop, the lower the subsequent need for manual weeding. At the same time, area performance increases due to higher driving speeds, and operators experience a noticeable reduction in workload. This improves both the economic viability and the attractiveness of labour‑intensive crops in organic farming. These benefits are offset by higher investment and operating costs, which is why the technology is particularly worthwhile where large amounts of manual hoeing are required or where weed pressure is high. Camera‑guided hoeing is an important building block in making mechanical weed control more efficient, crop‑friendly and future‑proof.
Increasing Yields and Profitability through Mixed Cropping
Another topic of the Organic Farming Spotlight at the DLG Feldtage 2026 is mixed cropping (intercropping). Mixed cropping systems offer potential for higher yields and more economically efficient organic arable farming. Currently, higher management requirements in cultivation and marketing, as well as a lack of experience, are limiting wider adoption. Challenges arise above all during sowing, as the component crops have different requirements in terms of sowing depth, timing and plant density. In addition, there is increased labour input and technical challenges during harvesting and post‑harvest processing, particularly for food‑grade produce with high quality requirements. Economic viability is also not automatic, as higher area yields can be offset by additional costs and strongly differing market prices of the component crops.
In mixed cropping systems, two or more crops are grown simultaneously on the same field and harvested together, often with the option of subsequent separation. Proven combinations include cereals and grain legumes, increasingly also winter crops to make better use of winter moisture and reduce the risk of drought stress. The design of the mixture – species selection, mixing ratios and sowing technique – must be tailored to the specific site and farm conditions and aligned with crop rotation, marketing and available machinery. Mixed cropping is particularly successful where harvests are used on‑farm (feed, biogas) or where mixtures are deliberately used to stabilise demanding crops or improve nitrogen utilisation. A gradual introduction using small areas and on‑farm trials is considered a sensible approach.
Compared with pure stands, cereal–legume mixtures can achieve total yield increases of 5 to 15 percent and make more efficient use of land. They suppress weeds more effectively, reduce production risks under extreme weather conditions and stabilise yields. By combining nitrogen‑fixing legumes with non‑legumes, nutrient supply is improved and nitrate leaching is reduced. At the same time, structurally diverse stands promote biodiversity, provide habitats for insects and wildlife, and support beneficial organisms in natural pest regulation. Mixed cropping has high potential as an important tool in organic farming to combine productivity, ecological performance and climate resilience.
DLG Spotlight “Organic Farming” Showcases Innovations in Organic Arable Farming
The Organic Farming Spotlight at the DLG Feldtage 2026 offers practical solutions to current challenges in organic arable farming. The focus is on ridge cultivation as a soil‑building, climate‑resilient cropping system and camera‑guided hoeing for efficient mechanical weed control in leaf and stem crops. These systems and crops are clearly demonstrated in field plots, including the machinery used and crop management practices.
In addition, visitors benefit from well‑founded advice and direct exchange: specialist advisers and experts share knowledge on variety selection, nutrient management and cropping strategies. Popup talks, panel discussions on organic markets, and guided tours of the organic trial fields of the Saxony‑Anhalt State Institute for Agriculture deepen the content and provide orientation for established organic farms, farms converting to organic production, and interested visitors. The Spotlight thus brings together knowledge, practical examples and dialogue to deliver concrete decision‑making support for a future‑oriented organic farming sector.