Field sizes and the future of farmland biodiversity in European landscapes

Abstract

Lower diversity of plant and animal farmland species are usually reported where cropland has been aggregated into larger fields, which raises prospects of curbing declines in European farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem services by halting trends to field size increases associated to agricultural intensification, without having to set aside arable land for conservation. Here, we consider the factors underlying trade-offs between farmer income and biodiversity as mediated by field size at local and landscape scales, and how these trade-offs may be overcome. Field sizes are still increasing, facilitated by increasing farm sizes and land consolidation. Decreases in working time and fuel expenses when fields are larger, uptake of larger machinery and subsidies favoring larger farms provide incentives to manage land in larger units, putting farmland biodiversity further at risk. Yet, field size-mediated ecological-economic trade-offs are largely ignored in policy and research. We recommend internalizing the ecological effects of changes in landscape-scale field size into land consolidation scheme design, ensuring that EU Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 rewards farmers that maintain and recreate fine-grained landscapes where these are essential for farmland biodiversity targets, and reducing economic-ecological trade-offs by stimulating agricultural research and innovation for economically efficient yet biodiversity-friendly farming in fine-grained landscapes.

Village modernization may contribute more to farmland bird declines than agricultural intensification

“…We described agricultural intensification (hereafter AI) using the following variables: cover of small woody features, open, and woodland RH and mean field size. These were previously shown to be important for farmland birds (Clough et al., 2020; Fahrig et al., 2015; Šálek et al., 2018).…”

An approach for comparing agricultural development to societal visions

“…These five indicators cover important processes of farm size growth and specialization, which are two key drivers of agricultural intensification (van Vliet et al 2015). At the landscape level, we chose to quantify agricultural field size, since this is an indicator of land management intensity with implications for biodiversity (Geiger et al 2010;Clough et al 2020), as well as total agricultural area and proportion of intensively used agricultural land (Billeter et al 2008).…”

Profitability of Crop Cultivation in Small Arable Fields When Taking Economic Values of Ecosystem Services into Account

“…A number of studies have shown that small crop fields benefit biodiversity (e.g., [8,11,12,40,41]). Fahrig et al [11] investigated the abundance and biodiversity of birds, plants, butterflies, syrphids, bees, carabids, and spiders in different agricultural landscapes, and found that field size had a strong effect on biodiversity.…”

“…Questions to be answered concern support amount per linear metre, maximum amount per hectare, the legal definition of 'perimeter', differentiations between crops and regions, etc. As pointed out by Clough et al [8], there is a large potential for reducing the economic-biodiversity trade-off associated with small fields by using new technologies such as small fossil-free autonomous vehicles.…”

“…Ecosystem services can be defined as "direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being" [7]. Small arable fields have been shown to be beneficial with regard to biodiversity and ecosystem services [8], especially in regulating and maintaining ecosystem services (for definitions, see CICES [9]). For example, the biodiversity of birds, insects, and red-listed plants increases as landscape heterogeneity increases with more small, irregular-shaped fields [10][11][12].…”