ICPR – International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine

Water protection measures

Water protection measures in agriculture comprise river-bank strips, green-belt setting in corn and vine culture and ditches hindering erosion and rain-wash from intensive farming. Wind protection equally reduces the drift of fertilizer and plant protection agents. In the floodplains of brooks and rivers as many fields as possible should be converted into grassland, near water bodies into grass strips. In floodplains, grassland farming is to be preferred to field cropping as, from meadows and pastures only a fraction of the humus soil eroded from fields is washed off into the floodplains. Formerly, many brooks were sheeted in order to protect the crop from flooding. From today’s point of view, such interference is to be avoided and to be reversed wherever possible.