Farmer perspectives of the on-farm and off-farm pros and cons of planted multifunctional riparian margins

Abstract

The planting of riparian margins is a policy option for pastoral farmers in response to land use induced environmental issues such as declining water quality, stream bank erosion, and loss of aquatic and terrestrial habitat. We elicited the views and experiences as to pros and cons of planting riparian margins from two sets of dairy farmers from Taranaki, New Zealand: those who are or have planted riparian margins, and those who have not yet done so. Those farmers who have planted riparian margins identified 21 positive aspects of riparian margin plantings and 11 negative aspects of riparian margin plantings. Perceived benefits identified by this group include water quality, increased biodiversity, the provision of cultural ecosystem services, immediate direct benefits to farm management and the farm system, and in some instances increased productivity on-farm. In contrast, those farmers that had fenced but not planted their riparian margins did not consider that riparian margin plantings could add further benefits to that which could be achieved by excluding stock from waterways, and associated only negative perceptions with riparian margin plantings. Planting riparian margins is not cost neutral and will not deliver anticipated environmental benefits in every situation. However, we argue that riparian margin plantings are an important ecological infrastructure investment that needs to be captured within a wider policy framework, the benefits of which extend beyond the mitigation of a single negative externality generated by land use practices, such as nutrient loss, and contribute to a multifunctional landscape.

Change in ecosystem service provision within a lowland dairy landscape under different riparian margin scenarios

“…We focused on food provision, water quality regulation, contact recreation, and amenity ecosystem services as these services either reflect values raised by participant farmers during the 2015 workshops (Maseyk et al 2017a), or are issues of current community and industry interest associated with the management of riparian margins. These four ecosystem services (one provisioning, one regulating and two cultural services (MA 2003; Haines-Young and Potschin 2011)) allowed for the exploration of potential interactions between ecosystem service type that also operate at very different spatial scales (paddock, farm, and catchment).…”

“…As a starting point to describe wider benefits associated with riparian margins, we held workshops (in May 2015) with dairy farmers farming the Taranaki ring plain (Taranaki, North Island, New Zealand), to elicit farmer perceptions as to the advantages and disadvantages of planting riparian margins on their farms. During the workshops, a range of views regarding planted riparian margins were presented, with some farmers perceiving no value additional to those achievable with fenced grass-strip riparian margins, while other farmers perceiving planted riparian margins to provide a number of additional benefits and values (Maseyk et al 2017a). This article builds upon these findings and aims to provide an indicative and initial quantification of the magnitude and direction of change in the provision of services and benefits in response to the management of riparian margin within a lowland dairy farming landscape.…”

Plant Diversity and Agroecosystem Function in Riparian Agroforests: Providing Ecosystem Services and Land-Use Transition

“…Increasing the biological complexity of agroecosystems can substantially enhance ecosystem services at regional and global scales [1,2]. While these diversified agroecosystems can take a number of different forms (e.g., crop rotation and intercropping), riparian systems remain a rather unexplored and understudied element of diversified agroecosystems, even though these systems have proven to be a popular and well received form of land diversification [3,4]. While it has been well established that vegetated riparian buffers can reduce non-point source inputs (sediment, nutrients, and pesticides) into waterways [5][6][7], these buffers have the potential to perform a number of other ecosystem functions.…”

The roles of non‐production vegetation in agroecosystems: A research framework for filling process knowledge gaps in a social‐ecological context

“…Experimental approaches in agroecosystems could also include subsequent measurements of social and economic outcomes, such as crop yield, meat yield as outputs, social outputs (e.g. Maseyk, Dominati, White, & Mackay, 2017), thus expanding the scope of the experiment to test for effects of non‐production vegetation elements on provisioning ecosystem services. Greater natural history and species‐level understanding are needed to build knowledge of the processes that support resilient ecosystems (Oliver et al, 2015), and enable the scaling up of key processes using appropriate modelling to predict landscape‐level ecosystem outcomes.…”