Field technician agroecology

Do you want to do field work in supporting the transition of agriculture to more sustainable ecology-based production systems? Do you enjoy working with young scientists in data collection across farms in the Netherlands? Are you enthusiastic about farmland biodiversity? Then you might be the candidate we are looking for!

What are you going to do?

Together with a team of young scientists, you will study how crop mixture production systems affect crop disease, weeds, pests and biodiversity. You will measure plant traits, crop damage and yield, soil characteristics, as well as arthropod and small vertebrate biodiversity. The team of technicians will closely collaborate and visit the sampling network of farms across the Netherlands as well as perform intensive sampling on crop systems experiments in Wageningen and Lelystad. Outside the growing season, you will analyse insect samples for taxonomic diversity, participate in greenhouse experiments and help PhDs and post-docs with data preparation and management. You will be part of a large consortium with exposure to arable farmers, government agencies, crop protection organisations, breeders, nature conservation organisations, banks, food chain partners, and environmental education.

CropMix

The research programme CropMix is a Dutch Research Agenda initiative of a large interdisciplinary research team joining forces with the agricultural sector to achieve a breakthrough in the transition to sustainable arable farming. We study how crop diversity in the field can benefit from ecological processes to partly replace pesticides and artificial fertilisers. Crop mixtures, strip cropping and rotation of crops over time enhances pest and disease suppression, and can ensure more efficient use of nutrients and sunlight to promote plant growth. Sustainable crop production with crop mixtures also contributes to reaching biodiversity goals. Understanding biodiversity restoration is not only important for estimating when natural pest control can effectively replace pesticides, but also how measures to increase general biodiversity can be factored into the price of products or into farm subsidies. CropMix also investigates which societal and institutional changes in the food system are needed to enable and accelerate the transition to sustainable mixed crop production. This is done by assuming a diversity of possible transition paths, such as short local chains or adaptation of existing national and international chains.