Special Issue Article: Advancing Environmental Conservation: Essays In Honor Of Navjot Sodhi
Global food security, biodiversity conservation and the future of agricultural intensification

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2012.01.068Get rights and content

Abstract

Under the current scenario of rapid human population increase, achieving efficient and productive agricultural land use while conserving biodiversity is a global challenge. There is an ongoing debate whether land for nature and for production should be segregated (land sparing) or integrated on the same land (land sharing, wildlife-friendly farming). While recent studies argue for agricultural intensification in a land sparing approach, we suggest here that it fails to account for real-world complexity. We argue that agriculture practiced under smallholder farmer-dominated landscapes and not large-scale farming, is currently the backbone of global food security in the developing world. Furthermore, contemporary food usage is inefficient with one third wasted and a further third used inefficiently to feed livestock and that conventional intensification causes often overlooked environmental costs. A major argument for wildlife friendly farming and agroecological intensification is that crucial ecosystem services are provided by “planned” and “associated” biodiversity, whereas the land sparing concept implies that biodiversity in agroecosystems is functionally negligible. However, loss of biological control can result in dramatic increases of pest densities, pollinator services affect a third of global human food supply, and inappropriate agricultural management can lead to environmental degradation. Hence, the true value of functional biodiversity on the farm is often inadequately acknowledged or understood, while conventional intensification tends to disrupt beneficial functions of biodiversity. In conclusion, linking agricultural intensification with biodiversity conservation and hunger reduction requires well-informed regional and targeted solutions, something which the land sparing vs sharing debate has failed to achieve so far.

Highlights

► The land sparing vs sharing dichotomy fails to account for real-world complexity. ► Small-, but not large-scale farming is the backbone of food security for the poor. ► Reducing food usage by waste, biofuels and livestock improves food security. ► Intensification with agrochemicals can cause huge environmental costs. ► On-farm functional biodiversity provides many services, e.g. pollination and biocontrol.

Section snippets

Introduction: setting the scene – land sparing vs wildlife friendly farming?

Combining efficient agricultural land use with biodiversity conservation is a challenge. With the global population approaching 9 billion people in the next few decades, it is often asserted (e.g., from United Nations (UNs) and Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)), that there is a need for 70–100% more food (Godfray et al., 2010). At the same time, the UN declared the current decade (2011–2020) the ‘Decade of Biodiversity’ with the EU (2011; the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020) setting the

Food production from smallholder farms, not large-scale commercial farms, is the backbone of global food security

Food security and food sovereignty are needed where the hungry live, which is often within a landscape matrix of ecosystems that are rich in biodiversity (Perfecto and Vandermeer, 2010). Hunger – somewhat counter intuitively – is not so much linked to the quantity of food that is globally produced but to poverty (Adams et al., 2004, Sachs et al., 2009). The majority of poor people live in rural areas with little or no access to productive agricultural lands. Hence, hunger is linked to farm

Increasing yields need not translate into biodiversity loss or more land spared for nature

The land sparing vs sharing dichotomy is based on the argument, demonstrated mostly for temperate regions, that yields are negatively correlated to wildland biodiversity (Kleijn et al., 2009, Geiger et al., 2010). High yields and high biodiversity, however, can co-exist in tropical smallholder agricultural systems (Perfecto et al., 2007, Perfecto and Vandermeer, 2010, Clough et al., 2011). In cacao agroforestry, for example, management could be further optimized for more diversity in the

Wildlife-friendly farming sustains cultural ecosystem services

Last but not least, cultural ecosystem services need to be taken into account. Often, religious and ethical attitudes are important drivers of choosing agricultural practices (Sodhi and Ehrlich, 2010). In developed countries for example, people value traditional heterogeneity and complexity of their surroundings such as hedges, flowering field margins, fallows, and forest margins – all of which benefit biodiversity (Brodt et al., 2009, Soliva et al., 2010). In addition, people appreciate the

Conclusions

In conclusion, conventional (“industrial”; de Schutter, 2011) intensification of agriculture increasing yields in the developed world does not necessarily contribute to global hunger reduction. Food security and food sovereignty need to increase in areas where the hungry live, based on robust, eco-efficient approaches (Keating et al., 2010) and “agroecological intensification” (or “ecological engineering” increasing sustainable productivity), which incorporates natural biodiversity patterns and

Acknowledgments

We note with sadness the passing of our friend, colleague, and mentor Navjot Sodhi; working with him was wonderful and we strongly believe that he would have loved to coauthor this opinion paper – we miss him. Ben Phalan and an anonymous reviewer provided very helpful comments. Author sequence follows the “sequence-determines-credit” (from T.T. to T.C.W.) and the “equal-contribution” norm (from L.J. to A.W.) (see Tscharntke et al., 2007b). Financial support for T.T. came from the German

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