Project name: Restoration and renewal of soil productivity with the help of ecosystem services

Project identification number: 1924226727

Name of the beneficiary: Gábor Szőllősi, self-employed

The name of the call for tenders: CREATION OF INNOVATION OPERATIONAL GROUPS AND SUPPORT OF THE INVESTMENT NECESSARY FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INNOVATIVE PROJECT 
Call for tenders code number:  VP3-16.1.1-4.1.5-4.2.1-4.2.2-8.1.1-8.2.1-8.3.1-8.5.1-8.5.2-8.6.1-17

The amount of the contracted support:  163 977 815
Amount of support:  70%

Completion date of the project: October 2023

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Summary of the project:

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Because of conventional agricultural methods, the self-sustaining and self-renewing ability of the soil has been overturned. This has both soil fertility, food quality and environmental protection effects. Conventional farming focuses unilaterally on soil cultivation and synthetic input materials and pays little or no attention to improving and increasing the biological properties of the soil. The intensive and unilateral interventions disrupted the nutrient cycle of the soils, significantly reduced the diversity and quantity of micro- and macrofauna, the porosity and aggregate-forming ability of the soils significantly decreased or ceased, the presence and damage caused by pathogenic microbes and insects increased, and their suppressive action on the soil reduced to a minimum. The water balance of the soils has been upset: either there is no retention, or the areas are waterlogged. Weeds dominate agricultural soils in large number and variety.

The project set itself the goal of solving these problems with biologically based methods, with a farming technology with a holistic approach, which is basically based on ecosystem services and can be easily implemented for any farm. The method is called Soil Humus Management (THM), which uses input materials that can only be used in organic farming and soil regenerative tillage methods. As a result of the method, the humus content of the soil increases, which is the final measure of soil improvement and soil renewal.

The cornerstones of the project's developments are: the natural origin; significant energy efficiency; significant improvement in water retention capacity; labor efficiency increase; outstanding production surface efficiency development; soil productivity development; a significant specific reduction in the use of materials of fossil origin; specific and absolute cost reduction; rapidly decreasing ecological footprint.

The project development was two-way: on the one hand, we developed the

1. input material production technologies, which were used as input materials in the APR technology, on the other hand,

2. we developed farming technology with cultivation experiments.

The input material production technologies are composting and biochar production. The elements of the THM method are minimum cultivation, the use of cover crops, the use of bee grazing strips, the use of humus compost-biochar-dudarite rock flour, the use of compost tea, the complete exclusion of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and mechanical weed management.

The experimental areas were realized in 5 farms in 5 cities, in organic and conventional farms, with a mixture of pepper cultivation. The experimental plots were made in a test area of 1000 nm and a control area of 1000 nm. The areas were separated by a bee grazing strip.

We sowed two types of varieties: Szegedi 80 and Kármin varieties, to filter out the variety effect. In the course of the project, in the 3 years between 2020-22, we used red pepper-red pepper seed replanting. We planted a non-freezing winter cover plant mixture in the crop rotation.

Soil work was done differently in each farm, depending on which farm made what investments in equipment. It was a common expectation that the farmers work with mintill methods in the smallest possible number of trips.

Every spring, before sowing, 1,500 kg of biochar-humus compost-dudarite coal mixture is applied to the test soil and incorporated shallowly into the soil. During the maintenance period, compost tea was sprayed once a month (from April to October) in the amount of 100 l/hectare. On the control soils, the usual input materials used by the farmers were added.

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Weed management of the test soils was carried out by hand hoeing, inter-row cultivation or weed combing. Chemical or inter-row cultivation methods were typically used in the control area.

With the tests, we wanted to provide a complex picture of the processes. We also performed soil, plant health, crop quantity and quality tests on both the test and control sides.

The results confirmed the expectations: in soils treated with THM technology, the nutrient content increased, the porosity improved, and the moisture content increased. The plant protection tests confirmed that, although a larger number of typically viral pathogens appeared on the plants of the treated area, they were localized and did not spread to the plants and the stock. The yield was higher in the test areas, but the pigment content, used as a measure of quality, was lower in the test areas.

The introduction of composting technology and biochar production was successfully implemented in a small Hungarian farm, which was able to produce high-quality compost and biochar products with a NÉBIH license under the brand name Humusline.

The results achieved in pepper cultivation

In the cultivation experiment, we examined the following aspects:

• Plant health status, need for plant protection intervention

• Crop yield

• Product quality: measurement of all dyes

We achieved better results in all respects in the treated areas than in the control fields.

The plant health status has never once justified the deviation from the experimental technology in the treated areas and the need for extraordinary chemical or other biological intervention, such as the once-a-month compost tea treatment.

The yield in the test areas was on average 30% higher than in the control areas.
In all color materials, the test technology, with fluctuating results, underperformed the results of the control panels in some locations, and exceeded them in others.

The dissemination objectives of the project were fully realized: the processes and results were published in professional journals, we held 2 presentation days, appeared at exhibitions and fairs, and communicated in several languages on our website.

With composting, we provide an example of the successful implementation of biomass-based circular farming.

In addition to the professional content of the research, we declare that we fulfilled the communication professional requirements undertaken in the project in all respects. We organized several conferences with field demonstrations, the website was developed, and the project participated in several exhibitions and fairs.

The domestic and international patent process of the results has been initiated. Gábor Szőllősi submitted the Hungarian patent application entitled "Composting with the methodology of controlled aerobic humus composting" to SZTNH, and the international patent application to the European Patent Office.
 

Thank you for the support of the Hungarian State and the European Union!