3. Results and discussion
3.1. Scenario estimations of area shares of most important crops in 2025
The land use distributions for different scenarios are shown in Fig. 2. For the BAU scenario, silage maize for energy and fodder had the highest area share (29%), followed by rye (21%), wheat (13%) rapeseed (16%) and barley (8%). The Irrigation and Energy scenarios resulted in 6% and 20% increases of the maize cultivation area, respectively, compared to the BAU scenario. In both cases, the increase in maize area was a result of the increased profitability of this crop due to increased yield and yield stability in the Irrigation scenario, and due to the financial subsidies for the production of renewable energy assumed in the Energy scenario. The increase in the area share of maize was accompanied by reductions in all other crops, particularly rye and rapeseed. Rye is the least economically feasible crop, and rapeseed turned out not to be economically competitive in the Energy scenario. The share of barley was small in all three scenarios, and it was mainly cultivated for crop rotation purposes. Sugar beet was below 1% area share in all scenarios. The results imply a drastic increase in the maize share for both
intensification scenarios compared to the BAU scenarios. However, even the maximum of 49% maize in the Energy scenario remained below the EU-CAP greening threshold of a maximum 70% share for
one crop. This is due to the scenario settings, in which crop rotations (according to phytosanitary requirements and preceding crop effects) were a constraint for management decisions.