Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification

Pretty, Jules; Benton, Tim G.; Bharucha, Zareen Pervez; Dicks, Lynn V.; Flora, Cornelia Butler; Godfray, H. Charles J.; Goulson, Dave; Hartley, Susan; Lampkin, Nicolas; Morris, Carol; Pierzynski, Gary M.; Prasad, P. V. Vara; Reganold, John P.; Rockström, Johan; Smith, Pete; Thorne, P.J.; Wratten, Steve D.

doi:10.1038/s41893-018-0114-0

Cited by 526 publications

(395 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Past increases in agricultural production often came at the cost of the environment and ecosystem services provided to society (Power, 2010), yet similar growth rates of agricultural yields are unlikely to be achieved in future (Ray, Mueller, West, & Foley, 2013). Hence, alternatives to the continuing expansion of cropland and conventional intensification are urgently required to ensure future food security and sustain earth system functioning (Pretty et al, 2018;Tilman, Balzer, Hill, & Befort, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The overlooked spatial dimension of climate‐smart agriculture

Prestele

Verburg

2020

Global Change Biology

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Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) and sustainable intensification (SI) are widely claimed to be high‐potential solutions to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change. Operationalization of these promising concepts is still lacking and potential trade‐offs are often not considered in the current continental‐ to global‐scale assessments. Here we discuss the effect of spatial variability in the context of the implementation of climate‐smart practices on two central indicators, namely yield development and carbon sequestration, considering biophysical limitations of suggested benefits, socioeconomic and institutional barriers to adoption, and feedback mechanisms across scales. We substantiate our arguments by an illustrative analysis using the example of a hypothetical large‐scale adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) in sub‐Saharan Africa. We argue that, up to now, large‐scale assessments widely neglect the spatially variable effects of climate‐smart practices, leading to inflated statements about co‐benefits of agricultural production and climate change mitigation potentials. There is an urgent need to account for spatial variability in assessments of climate‐smart practices and target those locations where synergies in land functions can be maximized in order to meet the global targets. Therefore, we call for more attention toward spatial planning and landscape optimization approaches in the operationalization of CSA and SI to navigate potential trade‐offs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The overlooked spatial dimension of climate‐smart agriculture

Prestele

Verburg

2020

Global Change Biology

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“…Moreover, the annually-accruing socio-economic and environmental spin-offs of 76 carefully-selected BC agents surely outpace those of input-intensive GR technologies (Bernhardt et al, 2017;Springmann et al, 2018). Now, as a new dawn is breaking for global agriculture (de Janvry, 2010;Pretty et al, 2018;Eyhorn et al, 2019), our work highlights the transformative potential of biodiversity-based innovations to secure a profitable production of sufficient, safe and nutrient-dense farm produce, while preserving our common natural heritage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Global environmental change is undermining many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, thus compromising endeavors to ensure economic growth, alleviate malnutrition, lift societal wellbeing and stabilize the Earth's life-support systems (Griggs et al, 2013). Although agri-food systems sustain the livelihoods of >2.5 billion people and help meet dietary requirements of a swelling human population, they also contribute to global warming, ecosystem decay, and agrochemical pollution (Tilman et al, 2001;Bernhardt et al, 2015;Maxwell et al, 2016;Springmann et al, 2018;Pretty et al, 2018). As such, agriculture-related habitat loss, natural resource degradation and a precipitous decline of biodiversity push the Earth system to a state that's distinctly less conducive to societal development (Rockstrom et al, 2009;Potts et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity-based innovations fortify agricultural growth in Asia-Pacific economies

Wyckhuys

Lu²,

Zhou

et al. 2019

Preprint

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The Green Revolution (GR) is widely credited with alleviating famine, mitigating poverty and driving aggregate economic growth over the past 6 decades. In Asia, GR technologies secured a tripling of rice output, with one-off germplasm improvements providing benefits beyond US$ 4.3 billion/year. Here, we unveil the magnitude and macro-economic relevance of parallel biodiversity-induced productivity growth in non-rice crops from 1918 to 2018. We empirically demonstrate how biological control (BC) defused invasive pest threats in multiple agricultural commodities, ensuring annually-accruing (on-farm) benefits of US$ 22.6 billion/year. Scientifically-guided BC permitted 73-100% yield-loss recovery in critical food, feed and fiber crops including cassava, banana, breadfruit and coconut. As such, BC promoted rural growth and prosperity even in marginal, poorly-endowed, non-rice environments. By placing agro-ecological innovations on equal footing with input-intensive measures, our work provides lessons for future efforts to mitigate invasive species, restore ecological resilience and sustainably raise output of global agri-food systems.

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“…In the Fens there are particular concerns about the rapid loss of peat associated with drainage and cultivation of organic soils, with severe implications for both climate warming and the long-term sustainability of the associated food production (Graves et al, 2015;Morris et al, 2010). However, low-yielding practices do not automatically pose lower environmental costs (primarily because they require a larger area of land to produce a given unit of food; Balmford, Amano, et al, 2018), and opportunities exist to increase yields whilst reducing environmental costs using a suite of technical and ecological innovations (Dicks et al, 2019;Firbank, Elliott, Drake, Cao, & Gooday, 2013;Pretty et al, 2018). Further, land sparing in The Fens presents an opportunity to prevent further wastage of peat, through the restoration of wetland habitat on currently drained organic soils (Peh et al, 2014).…”

Section: In Both Regions Species On Thementioning

confidence: 99%

Optimising nature conservation outcomes for a given region‐wide level of food production

Finch

Green

Massimino

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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The land sharing‐sparing framework aims to quantify the trade‐off between food production and biodiversity conservation, but it has been criticized for offering, for reasons of simplicity, an unrealistically limited set of different land uses. Here, we develop the framework to evaluate a much larger suite of land‐use strategies in which the areas and yields of three land‐use compartments - natural habitat, high‐yield farmland, and lower‐yield farmland - are varied simultaneously. For two regions of England, we use functions that relate the local population density of breeding bird species to farm yield to simulate species‐specific region‐wide population sizes under each strategy. We find that geometric mean population size, averaged across all species, is maximized when farmland yields are higher than the current average yield, and when spared land combines both natural habitat and low‐yield farmland. This conclusion is relatively insensitive to the maximum yield considered feasible under extreme land sparing, and holds across a range of region‐wide food production targets. To some extent, our conclusion depends on which species groups were included in the assessment. Considered alone, farmland birds preferred a strategy with little or no natural habitat. Nonetheless, the optimal strategy was broadly consistent across all widely recognized listings of species of conservation concern. Synthesis and applications. Our study looks at landscapes with a long history of agricultural use, and which have little remaining natural habitat, such as those found in lowland England. In these landscapes, conservation outcomes are likely to be maximized by mixed strategies in which high‐yield production enables an increase in area of both natural habitat and low‐yield farmland elsewhere in the region.

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Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification

Cited by 526 publications

References 34 publications

The overlooked spatial dimension of climate‐smart agriculture

The overlooked spatial dimension of climate‐smart agriculture

Biodiversity-based innovations fortify agricultural growth in Asia-Pacific economies

Optimising nature conservation outcomes for a given region‐wide level of food production

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