Oil palm is the most productive oil crop, but its high productivity is associated with conventional management (that is, high fertilization rates and herbicide application), causing deleterious environmental impacts. Using a 22 factorial experiment, we assessed the effects of conventional vs reduced (equal to nutrients removed by fruit harvest) fertilization rates and herbicide vs mechanical weeding on ecosystem functions, biodiversity and profitability. Analysing across multiple ecosystem functions, mechanical weeding exhibited higher multifunctionality than herbicide treatment, although this effect was concealed when evaluating only for individual functions. Biodiversity was also enhanced, driven by 33% more plant species under mechanical weeding. Compared with conventional management, reduced fertilization and mechanical weeding increased profit by 12% and relative gross margin by 11% due to reductions in material costs, while attaining similar yields. Mechanical weeding with reduced, compensatory fertilization in mature oil palm plantations is a tenable management option for enhancing ecosystem multifunctionality and biodiversity and increasing profit, providing win–win situations.
The management of ecosystems is a 'wicked' problem (DeFries & Nagendra, 2017). The question of how to simultaneously combat biodiversity loss and maintain ecosystem functioning while improving human welfare remains open. 'Multifunctional landscapes' have evolved as a key concept for addressing multiple goals in the selection of land-cover alternatives (Sayer et al., 2013). These goals can be quantified as ecosystem services (Manning et al., 2018), or more generally, as indicators. These may also include non-use ecosystem functions and biodiversity indicators, as well as social preferences
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