Although a quarter of Estonia is used for agriculture, when we travel around, we notice that the agricultural landscapes do not always offer much variety. Instead of variegated patches, the fields have become large in scale, boring, and uniform.

An extreme example of this occurred at the end of April 2024, when a powerful dust cloud around Haljala disrupted traffic along the Tallinn-Narva Highway. This was caused by dry spring winds blowing soil from large uncoated fields into the air, where it ended up as dust on the windowsills and in the respiratory tracts of Haljala’s inhabitants instead of being used to grow valuable food.

Intensive agriculture reduces the biodiversity of farmland

In the name of higher yields, we have started using more and more plant protection products and fertilisers. At the same time, doing so reduces the ability of wild species to survive in agricultural landscapes. Small plots of land are being consolidated into massive plots, where only a few varieties are grown. These large monoculture plots provide an ideal environment for pests because there is an abundance of food for them, while the habitats of their natural predators are severely limited.

The abundance of farmland birds, for example, reflects the state of the wider biota in agricultural landscapes, having fallen by up to 50% in Estonia over the last 40 years (Environmental Portal, 2024). In some parts of Estonia, the loss of habitats and food sources has already resulted in the disappearance of singing skylarks from the fields, along with the ‘service’ of the skylarks as destroyers of destructive insects.

Agriculture and nature go hand in hand

The help that nature provides to the farmer is diverse, and increases the more efficiently the farmer cares for nature. For example, caring for soil health and landscape biodiversity increases agricultural production capacity and makes it more resilient to changing weather conditions.

Fear of harmful organisms has largely led to the nature being displaced from agricultural landscapes, despite there being more than a thousand beneficial (or at least harmless) species in nature for each pest. For example, different organisms can destroy pests, pollinate crops and fruit trees, limit the flow of nutrients into water bodies, reduce disease outbreaks and strengthen the resistance of cultivated plants to drought and disease – and they do all of this for free.

By promoting the functioning of agro-ecosystems, we are also promoting greater assistance from nature in our fields. This means that although pests and diseases do not completely disappear from fields, their spread thanks to natural enemies remains below the control criterion, thereby saving money and also making the living environment cleaner.
 

The key word is diversity

Diversity in landscapes and management techniques helps to ensure that nature is supported and that there is greater resilience to environmental change.

The greater the diversity of natural elements in the landscape (meadows, grassland strips, shrub strips, patches of forest), the greater the variety of useful species found there.

In addition, you can learn about many nature-friendly techniques from the LIFE-IP project ‘Nature-rich Estonia’, on the website www.heapõld.ee/en.

One size doesn’t fit all

With the start of a new vegetation period, it is now a good time to take a look at your land and consider its future. Is there room for biodiversity in and around my fields? Are there any beneficial bugs or insects out there that could help me? Are my soils healthy and biodiverse enough to support the growth of strong, healthy plants?

Working with nature requires an understanding of its patterns. Each field is different, so there is no one-size-fits-all solution that works in all companies and on all fields. It is worth testing different approaches that fit the landscape, production methods, techniques, and possibilities. It is worth starting with small steps and testing different nature-friendly farming methods one by one. For instance, the cultivation of cover crops is an easy and effective way to improve soil health, and establishing a biodiverse grassland strip is relatively straightforward but can deliver significant benefits. Exciting testing will continue for many years to come!

Sharing experiences and working together with neighbours helps us to better understand which nature-friendly methods are the most effective. It is also increasingly possible in Estonia to collect information about nature-friendly topics, such as regenerative agriculture, whether this is through various field days, podcasts, blogs, conferences, and websites.

So why wouldn’t we want to contribute to creating agro-biodiversity in our fields, which in turn supports agricultural activity and ensures its sustainability?