Advanced Crop Production

The course deal with modern developed cropping systems, mainly in temperate areas of the world. The outset will be the need to increase yields and resource efficiency of cropping systems. In the decades ahead, there will be a need for increased crop production, but this has to be achieved within strong limitations on the resource input and no chance to increase the total area of cropped land.
The students should understand the main agronomic constraints for increasing crop productivity, the methods currently used to develop crops, crop management and cropping systems (increasing yield potential, as well as closing the yield gap), and the science behind this.
Apart from the teaching based on textbook material and scientific papers, the students will also work with Danish case farms. They will visit farms, and get access to detailed farm data. They will work with crop optimization and cropping system optimization, in order to understand on-farm limitations and constraints to optimizing crop production and closing the yield gap.

The objective of the course is to enable students to understand and analyse modern crop production, its main limiting factors and the methods used to develop crop production at the crop and cropping system levels. Students should be able to analyse complex, real-life problems within crop production.
Knowledge:
- Describe and reflect on model-based interventions in management of plant production.
- Identify key factors limiting yields, and the available strategies to overcome them with respect to productivity, profitability and environmental impact analysing modern crop production systems,
- Obtain tools to analyse farmers' and other stakeholders' decision making and the common gap between theory and practice.
Overview of components of farming and cropping systems and their interactions
Skills:
- Suggest strategies for reducing the "yield gap" in practical farming after analysis.
Competences:
- Critical reflect on the environmental impacts of crop production and their mitigation.
- Ability to apply the knowledge of farming and cropping systems and their interactions in ananalysis of real life system limitations
- Evaluate cropping systems by using the acquired overview of the complexity of biological, chemical and physical factors affecting crop production

Skills
· Collect and process relevant information for value chain analysis
· Reason about the institutional and management dynamics in the agricultural and agribusiness sector
· Discuss policy and management tools for upgrading and developing agriculture and agribusiness
· Discuss the feasibility of interventions for upgrading and developing agricultural value chains
· Communicate ideas for agricultural value chain development in developing countries to stakeholders
· Develop an analytical framework to guide data collection and analysis
· Learn in an interactive and collegial learning environment

Competencies
· Apply relevant theories/concepts to analyse institutions, the enabling environment and agribusinesses in relation to agricultural value chains
· Apply value chain analysis approaches to design value chain interventions and upgrading
· Argue coherently and reflect critically within the parameters of a particular academic discipline, including self- assessment on Learning.