2024 - Agriculture in climate change - The unpredictable weather demands a lot from the farmers

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Hot and dry like this summer – or wet and cool like 2021? Diversification in the field is becoming increasingly important.

At first glance, the plants on the trial field at Agroscope in Reckenholz look like maize. They stand there lush green, the current heat and drought don’t seem to harm them. Only what grows here is not corn. It is sorghum – a plant from Africa.

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Sorghum could replace corn as a forage crop. The plant is better adapted to drought than corn.

Keystone/Sue Ogrocki

Experiments with African plants

“Sorghum is well adapted to drought stress and is used for animal feed,” says Tiziana Vonlanthen. At the Agroscope site in Reckenholz, she works with sorghum, but also with soya and maize.

In the cultivation trial, she compares the properties of the different cultures and tries to draw conclusions for agriculture.

Maize continues to grow unperturbed, even when it’s dry, says Vonlanthen. Sorghum, on the other hand, adapts to drought: “It stops growing and develops more roots so that it can absorb water better.”

Agroscope is the federal competence center for agricultural research. It operates in Reckenholz/ZH one of its research centers.

Just a few meters from the sorghum, another culture thrives that likes it warm and dry. They, too, are still rarely cultivated in Switzerland and are being researched here: chickpeas. The legume, which is often planted in India or Turkey, is coping well with the conditions of this summer.

Sorghum and chickpeas could very well be the corn or potatoes of the future in Switzerland, says Jürg Hiltbrunner – if not everywhere. At Agroscope, he works with different plant varieties in arable farming and compares their properties. The current trend is towards protein plants. “And there are some that are already better adapted to our growing conditions than chickpeas,” says Hiltbrunner. Because new varieties often have disadvantages. The chickpea, for example, likes it warm, but doesn’t like it wet. In a rainy summer like last year, there is a risk of crop failure.

Agriculture is a complex system. There are numerous levers that can be adjusted in order to react to the changed conditions caused by climate change: Methods of tillage, cultivation systems or new breeds of resistant varieties are a few keywords.