Ecological-economic trade-offs of Diversified Farming Systems – A review
By Julia Rosa-Schleich, Jacqueline Loos, O. Musshoff, T. Tscharntke. Ecological Economics, 2019
331 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Diversified Farming (DF) Systems aim to integrate ecological and economic benefits for sustainable agriculture. DF systems can enhance ecological benefits at the farm level and therewith reduce negative environmental externalities. However, diversification may cause economic costs for the farmer. Although considering ecological-economic trade-offs is crucial for integrating biodiversity into agricultural production, ecological and economic benefits of DF practices have rarely been analyzed conjointly. Here, we synthesize published evidence provided by reviews and meta-analyses that evaluate the ecological and economic performance of single DF practices and more complex diversification bundles. Compared to non-diversified farming, DF practices provide substantially greater biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, such as pest and weed control, soil health, nutrient and water management and carbon sequestration. Overall, the ecological benefits for the farmer were partly insufficient to outbalance economic costs in the short term, even though many examples showed that DF practices have the potential to lead to higher and more stable yields, increase profitability and reduce risks in the long-term. Combined DF practices deliver highest ecological and economic benefits on the farm level. Financial instruments are needed to increase the implementation of combined DF practices to adequately reward for the ecological benefits on the farm level.
Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a5bac033f6829733c0a3ffebb1801d65f7cd3f32
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In Agronomy and Crop Science
In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Citations in the corpus
- Evidence map of crop diversification strategies at the global scale (2019, background): “Our results also reveal that the majority of the extracted effect sizes indicate a positive impact on crop yield, as Rosa-Schleich et al (2019).”