Synthesis, part of a Special Feature on A Social-Ecological Analysis of Diversified Farming Systems: Benefits, Costs, Obstacles, and Enabling Policy Frameworks Ecosystem Services in Biologically…

By C. Kremen, Albie F. Miles. 2012

863 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We hypothesize that biological diversification across ecological, spatial, and temporal scales maintains and regenerates the ecosystem services that provide critical inputs—such as maintenance of soil quality, nitrogen fixation, pollination, and pest control—to agriculture. Agrobiodiversity is sustained by diversified farming practices and it also supplies multiple ecosystem services to agriculture, thus reducing environmental externalities and the need for off-farm inputs. We reviewed the literature that compares biologically diversified farming systems with conventional farming systems, and we examined 12 ecosystem services: biodiversity; soil quality; nutrient management; water-holding capacity; control of weeds, diseases, and pests; pollination services; carbon sequestration; energy efficiency and reduction of warming potential; resistance and resilience to climate change; and crop productivity. We found that compared with conventional farming systems, diversified farming systems support substantially greater biodiversity, soil quality, carbon sequestration, and water-holding capacity in surface soils, energy-use efficiency, and resistance and resilience to climate change. Relative to conventional monocultures, diversified farming systems also enhance control of weeds, diseases, and arthropod pests and they increase pollination services; however, available evidence suggests that these practices may often be insufficient to control pests and diseases or provide sufficient pollination. Significantly less public funding has been applied to agroecological research and the improvement of diversified farming systems than to conventional systems. Despite this lack of support, diversified farming systems have only somewhat reduced mean crop productivity relative to conventional farming systems, but they produce far fewer environmental and social harms. We recommend that more research and crop breeding be conducted to improve diversified farming systems and reduce yield gaps when they occur. Because single diversified farming system practices, such as crop rotation, influence multiple ecosystem services, such research should be holistic and integrated across many components of the farming system. Detailed agroecological research especially is needed to develop crop- and region-specific approaches to control of weeds, diseases, and pests.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/428fcc702376e0460db5af838cef0ed74a66a707

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Pollination services from field-scale agricultural diversification may be context-dependent (2015, background): “Increasing the size of hedgerows relative to fields or introducing a suite of diversification techniques could increase the effectiveness of re-diversification efforts (Kremen and Miles, 2012).”
Ecological intensification of agriculture — sustainable by nature (2014, background): “[4–11]), that making use of the regulating functions of nature requires landscape-level agroecosystem design.”
Current knowledge and future research opportunities for modeling annual crop mixtures. A review (2019, neutral): “Recent reviews and meta-analyses summarized the main ecosystem services they can deliver (Kiaer et al. 2009; Malézieux et al. 2009; Kremen and Miles 2012; Ehrmann and Ritz 2014; Altieri et al. 2015; Barot et al. 2017; Duchene et al. 2017; Raseduzzaman and Jensen 2017), highlighting their benefits…”
Crop Diversification for Improved Weed Management: A Review (2021, background): “Crop diversification can be defined as the conscious inclusion of functional biodiversity at the temporal and/or spatial levels to improve productivity and stability of ecosystem services [36].”
Evidence map of crop diversification strategies at the global scale (2019, methodology): “We also screened the references cited in each selected metaanalysis and those listed in a narrative review (Kremen and Miles 2012).”
Increasing global crop harvest frequency: recent trends and future directions (2013, background): “In general however increased cropping frequency reduces soil organic carbon [56, 57], the diversity of soil microbiota [58], arthropod [59], and other species [60] especially if higher CHF leads to conventional cropping [61, 62] and landscape simplification [63].”
Wildflower plantings enhance the abundance of natural enemies and their services in adjacent blueberry fields (2015, background): “Increasing biological diversity within agricultural landscapes through the provision of additional floral resources to conserve natural enemies may also enhance or maintain other ecosystem services (Isbell et al., 2011; Kremen and Miles, 2012), such as creating bird habitat (Vickery et al.”
Integrated farm management for sustainable agriculture: Lessons for knowledge exchange and policy (2019, background): “Research has continued to show the challenges of 32 agricultural intensification, particularly in the areas of biodiversity conservation and the 33 provision of other ecosystem services, such as healthy soils and pollination (Kleijn and 34 Sutherland, 2003; Kremen and Miles, 2012; Pimental, 2006).”
Landscapes that work for biodiversity and people (2018, background): “Appropriate management techniques can promote groundwater recharge and stream flow in working landscapes (table S2) (31, 86), of increasing importance under drier futures with more extreme precipitation events (97).”