Landscape management

Crop-damaging wireworms are the soil-dwelling larvae of click beetles. Wireworms have emerged in Europe over the last 15 years. There is actually few efficient control solutions, and actual control options use toxic pesticides. There is therefore a need for safer control techniques. A survey of 341 maize fields by Saussure et al. shows that wireworm damage is decreased by the occurrence of hedges and cultivated crops at the maize field border. Whereas wireworm damage is increased by the occurrence of grassland at the maize field border or during the rotation.

Agriculture provides society with many services such as food, carbon sequestration, pest regulation and jobs. The efficiency of those services depends on managament choices by farmers at the landscape scale. Chopin et al. designed a new method to study the evolution of farming systems at the landscape scale.

Farms that keep natural or semi-natural areas have better environmental performance. Such areas include hedgerows, buffer strips, field margins, woodlots, grasslands, agroforestry and traditional orchards. García-Feced et al. have drawn maps to show the link between agricultural production and changes of natural vegetation.