Global Assessment of Agricultural System Redesign for Sustainable Intensification

The sustainable intensification (SI) of agricultural systems offers synergistic opportunities for the co31 production of agricultural and natural capital outcomes. Efficiency and Substitution are steps towards SI, but system Redesign is essential to deliver optimum outcomes as ecological and economic conditions change. We show global progress towards SI by farms and hectares, using seven SI sub-types: integrated pest management, conservation agriculture, integrated crop and biodiversity, pasture and forage, trees, irrigation management, and small/patch systems. From 47 SI initiatives at scale (each >104 farms or hectares), we estimate 163M farms (29% of all worldwide) have crossed a redesign threshold, practising forms of SI on 453Mha of agricultural land (9% of worldwide total). Key challenges include investing to integrate more forms of SI in farming systems, creating agricultural knowledge economies, and establishing policy measures to scale SI further. We conclude that SI may be approaching a tipping point where it could be transformative

Payment for ecosystem services: the roles of positive incentives and information sharing in stimulating adoption of silvopastoral conservation practices

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) applied to agricultural systems, such as tropical rangelands, seeks to provide multiple services while sustaining food production. However, there is considerable debate regarding the effectiveness of PES programs for changing farmer behavior and enhancing conservation. We interviewed 101 cattle farmers in Costa Rica following the Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Approaches to Ecosystem Management Project (RISEMP) PES pilot (2002?2008). We evaluated adoption of silvopastoral conservation practices?reintroducing trees and shrubs into permanent pastures?that provide varying proportions of public and private benefits; we estimated influence of PES, technical assistance (e.g., farmer training) and information sharing on stimulating their adoption. Our analysis included evaluation of information sharing pathways and accounted for key farm capital characteristics. We found that technical assistance associated with PES had a positive influence on adoption rates, particularly for practices with private benefits of improving rangeland productivity. PES payments alone had the most detectable, positive influence on the adoption of only one type of practice, multistrata live fences, which primarily provides public goods such as biodiversity habitat and carbon sequestration, but are perceived by many farmers to reduce rangeland productivity. Farmers accessed information about management practices through both social and institutional sources. While the RISEMP pilot focused on institutional information sources and technical assistance, future policy design should also include social information networks and consider how farmer-to-farmer communication influences conservation practice adoption

Biodiversity and ecosystem services of agricultural landscapes: reversing agriculture’s externalities: In: Agroecology for food security and nutrition - Proceedings of the FAO International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition

Agriculture faces the dual challenge of feeding a 9-12 billion global population by 2050 and reducing its footprint on the environment. While the impact of agriculture on the environment is well recognized, and there are growing calls for efforts to reduce or mitigate this impact, the ecosystem services approach presents an alternative where ecosystems are managed to support and improve agriculture. As the world’s single largest terrestrial ecosystem, agro-ecosystems must be managed for the multiple goods and services they provide. A principal question for agroecology is whether the large-scale adoption of ecosystem-based approaches is capable transforming agriculture’s environmental externalities from negative to positive, while meeting food production needs. Ecosystem services science plays a significant role in this transformation by focusing attention on how biodiversity in agricultural landuses and landscapes can be managed for multiple benefits. We provide an example from the Volcanica Central Talamanca Biological Corridor in Costa Rica, where significant research has been undertaken, and is beginning to show where synergistic interactions between conservation, agricultural production and hydropower generation can be managed for multiple benefits. We recognize that significant trade-offs can exist. However, focusing attention on these multiple services, understanding their mechanisms, and quantifying the benefits of the trade-offs between the multiple services of agricultural landscapes provides novel solutions and spaces for managing positive interactions between agriculture and the environment

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of Agricultural Landscapes. Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition

Agriculture faces the dual challenge of feeding a 9-12 billion global population by 2050 and reducing its footprint on the environment. While the impact of agriculture on the environment is well recognized, and there are growing calls for efforts to reduce or mitigate this impact, the ecosystem services approach presents an alternative where ecosystems are managed to support and improve agriculture. As the world’s single largest terrestrial ecosystem, agro-ecosystems must be managed for the multiple goods and services they provide. A principal question for agroecology is whether the large-scale adoption of ecosystem-based approaches is capable transforming agriculture’s environmental externalities from negative to positive, while meeting food production needs. Ecosystem services science plays a significant role in this transformation by focusing attention on how biodiversity in agricultural landuses and landscapes can be managed for multiple benefits. We provide an example from the Volcanica Central Talamanca Biological Corridor in Costa Rica, where significant research has been undertaken, and is beginning to show where synergistic interactions between conservation, agricultural production and hydropower generation can be managed for multiple benefits. We recognize that significant trade-offs can exist. However, focusing attention on these multiple services, understanding their mechanisms, and quantifying the benefits of the trade-offs between the multiple services of agricultural landscapes provides novel solutions and spaces for managing positive interactions between agriculture and the environment

Managing the farmscape for connectivity increases conservation value for tropical bird species with different forest-dependencies

Land clearing for agricultural use is a primary driver of biodiversity loss and fragmentation of natural ecosystems. Restoring natural habitat connectivity by retaining quality habitats and increasing on-farm tree cover contributes to species' mobility and persistence in agricultural landscapes. Nonetheless, remarkably few studies have quantified the impacts of on-farm practices for species' mobility measured as functional connectivity within the context of farm and broader spatial levels of landscape organization. We tested how adding and removing trees in different configurations on a farm comprised of coffee plantations and cattle pastures can help evaluate species’ mobility at the farmscape level (an area comprising the farm plus a 1.5 km buffer area). We coupled bird capture data and scenario modeling to assess species mobility of five neotropical bird species with distinct life history characteristics representing a gradient of forest dependency. We used seven years of mist-netting data to estimate species habitat affinity and to predict species mobility using the Circuitscape model across a 4371 ha farmscape in Costa Rica. Circuitscape allowed us to estimate changes in movement probability and relative changes in resistance to movement that species experience during dispersal (measured as resistance distance and passage area through which species can move) under four farmscape management scenarios. The four land-use scenarios included: (a) the 2011 farmscape land-use composition and configuration, b) converting all existing live fences to post-and-wire fence lines in the farm c) converting simplified coffee agroforests to multistrata coffee agroforests in the farm, and d) placing multistrata live fences around the perimeter of every parcel and roads on the farm. Model results suggest that existing multistrata live fences maintain the sporadic movement of all five species irrespective of forest dependence. Likewise, adding multistrata live fences around individual fields presents a more efficient strategy for increasing species mobility than multistrata coffee agroforestry systems in the assessed farmscape, by doubling the passage areas available to all species, although it created labyrinths with “dead-ends” for two species. While retaining large habitat patches remains important for conservation, managing on-farm connectivity complements these efforts by increasing movement probability and reducing dispersal resistance for forest-dependent bird species.</p

Examining multi-functionality for crop yield and ecosystem services in five systems of agroecological intensification

Agroecological intensification (AEI) integrates ecological principles and biodiversity management into farming systems with the aims of increasing farm productivity, reducing dependency on external inputs, and sustaining or enhancing ecosystem services. This review develops an analytic framework to characterize the fulfilment of these objectives by documenting the co-occurrence of positive, neutral, and negative outcomes for crop yield and nine regulating ecosystem services. We provide an illustrative examination of the framework, evaluating evidence for yield and ecosystem service outcomes across five AEI systems: conservation agriculture, holistic grazing management, organic agriculture, precision agriculture, and system of rice intensification (SRI). We reviewed 104 studies containing 245 individual comparisons between AEI and contrasting farming systems. In three of the five AEI systems, conservation agriculture, precision agriculture, and SRI, more than half of reviewed comparisons reported ‘win-win’ outcomes, enhancement of both yield and ecosystem services, or ‘win-neutral’ outcomes relative to contrasting farming systems. The review presents substantial evidence that the five AEI systems can contribute to multi-functional agriculture by increasing ecosystem service provision, or reducing negative externalities associated with agriculture, while maintaining or increasing yields. A framework such as the one presented here can help guide decision-makers considering how best to implement multi-functional agriculture so that both crop yield and ecosystem service delivery can be maintained or increased

Social and ecological analysis of commercial integrated crop livestock systems: Current knowledge and remaining uncertainty

Crops and livestock play a synergistic role in global food production and farmer livelihoods. Increasingly, however, crops and livestock are produced in isolation, particularly in farms operating at the commercial scale. It has been suggested that re-integrating crop and livestock systems at the field and farm level could help reduce the pollution associated with modern agricultural production and increase yields. Despite this potential, there has been no systematic review to assess remaining knowledge gaps in both the social and ecological dimensions of integrated crop and livestock systems (ICLS), particularly within commercial agricultural systems. Based on a multi-disciplinary workshop of international experts and additional literature review, we assess the current knowledge and remaining uncertainties about large-scale, commercial ICLS and identify the source of remaining knowledge gaps to establish priorities for future research. We find that much is understood about nutrient flows, soil quality, crop performance, and animal weight gain in commercial ICLS, but there is little knowledge about its spatial extent, animal behavior or welfare in ICLS, or the tradeoffs between biodiversity, pest and disease control, greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, and drought and heat tolerance in ICLS. There is some evidence regarding the economic outcomes in commercial ICLS and supply chain and policy barriers to adoption, but little understanding of broader social outcomes or cultural factors influencing adoption. Many of these knowledge gaps arise from a basic lack of data at both the field and system scales, which undermines both statistical analysis and modeling efforts. Future priorities for the international community of researchers investigating the tradeoffs and scalability of ICLS include: methods standardization to better facilitate international collaborations and comparisons, continued social organization for better data utilization and collaboration, meta-analyses to answer key questions from existing data, the establishment of long term experiments and surveys in key regions, a portal for citizen science, and more engagement with ICLS farmers

Evidence Synthesis as the Basis for Decision Analysis: A Method of Selecting the Best Agricultural Practices for Multiple Ecosystem Services

Agricultural management practices have impacts not only on crops and livestock, but also on soil, water, wildlife, and ecosystem services. Agricultural research provides evidence about these impacts, but it is unclear how this evidence should be used to make decisions. Two methods are widely used in decision making: evidence synthesis and decision analysis. However, a system of evidence-based decision making that integrates these two methods has not yet been established. Moreover, the standard methods of evidence synthesis have a narrow focus (e.g., the effects of one management practice), but the standard methods of decision analysis have a wide focus (e.g., the comparative effectiveness of multiple management practices). Thus, there is a mismatch between the outputs from evidence synthesis and the inputs that are needed for decision analysis. We show how evidence for a wide range of agricultural practices can be reviewed and summarized simultaneously (“subject-wide evidence synthesis”), and how this evidence can be assessed by experts and used for decision making (“multiple-criteria decision analysis”). We show how these methods could be used by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in California to select the best management practices for multiple ecosystem services in Mediterranean-type farmland and rangeland, based on a subject-wide evidence synthesis that was published by Conservation Evidence (www.conservationevidence.com). This method of “evidence-based decision analysis” could be used at different scales, from the local scale (farmers deciding which practices to adopt) to the national or international scale (policy makers deciding which practices to support through agricultural subsidies or other payments for ecosystem services). We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this method, and we suggest some general principles for improving evidence synthesis as the basis for multi-criteria decision analysis.Funding for this project and support for GES was provided by a 2016 Science Catalyst Fund grant to RK. GES was supported by The AG Leventis Foundation. GES and WJS were supported by the David and Claudia Harding Foundation. WJS was supported by Arcadia. LVD was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (grants NE/K015419/1 and NE/N014472/1)