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Presseinformation: Wildflower strips versus organic farming
Nr. 117 - 07.09.2026
International research team compares ecological and economic benefits
What makes more sense when farming wheat – strips of wildflowers along fields or organic farming? Both options provide financial support via the European Union as environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, has now compared the ecological and economic benefits of these two farming methods in fields planted with winter wheat. They found that both measures increased biodiversity by 20 to 30 percent compared to conventionally farmed wheat fields. From an economic perspective, the organic fields were the most profitable. Although yields were only half as high as those of conventionally farmed wheat, profits were one and a half times higher. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
The researchers compared winter wheat fields managed in three different ways: conventionally farmed wheat with a strip of wildflowers; organically farmed wheat; and conventionally farmed wheat with no environmental intervention as a control. They studied nine landscapes in the Göttingen area over a two-year period. The team found that the organically farmed fields contained the highest number of wild plant species, even though flower strips – including the sown wildflowers – had a similar number of species. Flower strips were visited by three times as many bee species as organic fields, but both environmental measures had higher bee populations than the control fields. Ground beetles, spiders, and hoverflies thrived under both environmental interventions, with 20 to 30 percent more species than in the conventionally farmed areas. From an economic perspective, the organically farmed areas were the most profitable: despite wheat yields that were 50 percent lower, profits were more than 150 percent higher than those of the conventionally farmed control fields, due to better options to market and sell the crop, as well as EU subsidies. The profit from the fields with flower strips was only slightly lower than that of the control fields when subsidies for flower strips were factored in.
“We also compared the yields from conventionally farmed areas where there were flower strips against yields in areas that were conventionally farmed without flower strips. Interestingly, where there were no flower strips, yields were 5 percent higher and profits were 21 percent higher, suggesting that farmers probably established wildflower strips selectively on more peripheral and less productive areas of farmland,” notes lead author Dr Péter Batáry, Head of the Landscape and Conservation Ecology Group, Centre for Ecological Research in Hungary.
“Environmental measures such as organic farming and wildflower strips complement each other in their importance for biodiversity conservation, as they partly promote different species. Combining these different measures is an important step toward agricultural landscapes with multiple functions,” adds Professor Teja Tscharntke at Göttingen University’s Department of Agroecology and Functional Agrobiodiversity.
Original publication: Péter Batáry et al. Comparing ecological and economic benefits of organic farming and annual flower strips. Journal of Applied Ecology (2026). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.70534
Contact:
Dr Péter Batáry
Landscape and Conservation Ecology Group
Institute of Ecology and Botany
MTA–HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research
2163 Vácrátót, Hungary
Email: batary.peter@ecolres.hu
Professor Teja Tscharntke
University of Göttingen
Department of Agroecology and Functional Agrobiodiversity
Grisebachstraße 6, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Tel: +49 (0)551 39-29205
Email: ttschar@gwdg.de