Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 64, Issue 2, 15 December 2007, Pages 253-260
Ecological Economics

Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2007.02.024Get rights and content

Abstract

Agricultural ecosystems are actively managed by humans to optimize the provision of food, fiber, and fuel. These ecosystem services from agriculture, classified as provisioning services by the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, depend in turn upon a web of supporting and regulating services as inputs to production (e.g., soil fertility and pollination). Agriculture also receives ecosystem dis-services that reduce productivity or increase production costs (e.g., herbivory and competition for water and nutrients by undesired species). The flows of these services and dis-services directly depend on how agricultural ecosystems are managed and upon the diversity, composition, and functioning of remaining natural ecosystems in the landscape. Managing agricultural landscapes to provide sufficient supporting and regulating ecosystem services and fewer dis-services will require research that is policy-relevant, multidisciplinary and collaborative. This paper focuses on how ecosystem services contribute to agricultural productivity and how ecosystem dis-services detract from it. We first describe the major services and dis-services as well as their key mediators. We then explore the importance of scale and economic externalities for the management of ecosystem service provision to agriculture. Finally, we discuss outstanding issues in regard to improving the management of ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture.

Introduction

Covering over a third of total global land area (FAOSTAT, 1999)1, agriculture represents humankind's largest engineered ecosystem. Agricultural ecosystems both provide and rely upon important ecosystem services (ES). Daily (1997) has defined ES as “the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life”. ES can be classified into four main categories: provisioning, supporting, cultural, and regulating services (Fig. 1) (MA, 2005). Agricultural ecosystems are primarily managed to optimize the provisioning ES of food, fiber, and fuel. In the process, they depend upon a wide variety of supporting and regulating services, such as soil fertility and pollination (Millenniu Ecosystem Assessment (MA), 2005, National Research Council (NCR), 2005), that determine the underlying biophysical capacity of agricultural ecosystems (Wood et al., 2000). Agriculture also receives an array of ecosystem dis-services (EDS) that reduce productivity or increase production costs (e.g., herbivory and competition for water). The flows of these ES and EDS (Fig. 2) rely on how agricultural ecosystems are managed at the site scale and on the diversity, composition, and functioning of the surrounding landscape (Tilman, 1999).

Indeed, the vast scope of agriculture as a “managed ecosystem” (Antle and Capalbo, 2002) embedded in a web of natural ecosystems offers both challenge and opportunity for optimizing the relative flow of ES and EDS to and from agriculture. This paper focuses on ES and EDS to agriculture (see the introduction of this special issue for a discussion of ES and EDS from agriculture). We first describe the major ES and EDS to agriculture and the key mediators. We then explore the importance of scale of ES and EDS provision to agriculture for effective and efficient management and make recommendations for promoting coordinated management practices. Finally, we discuss several outstanding issues in regard to management of ES and EDS to agriculture and recommend potential research directions.

Section snippets

Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture

A wide variety of ES and EDS confer benefits and costs, respectively, to agriculture. These are supplied by varied species, functional groups, and guilds over a range of scales and influenced by human activities both intentionally and unintentionally. Here we briefly describe the range of major ES and EDS to agriculture and summarize them in Fig. 2. Treatment of each service is necessarily cursory, and citations are indicative rather than exhaustive.

Implications of ES for agricultural management

Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture influence both where and how people choose to farm. For example, many major fruit-producing regions in temperate climate zones are located downwind of large bodies of water that helps to regulate local atmospheric temperature changes (Ackerman and Knox, 2006) and reduces the probability of late frosts that might damage fruit blossoms. The major cereal grain producing regions of the North American prairie, the Asian steppe and the South American

Major issues and research needs

The study of ES is still relatively young, and many unresolved issues remain. How well understood are the ecosystem functions behind the ES that affect agriculture's performance? Certain field-scale dimensions are familiar topics of agronomic research. Crop yield response to soil fertility and water supply has been extensively studied (e.g., Hanks and Ritchie, 1991), as have crop yield responses to pest pressure (e.g., Cousens et al., 1987). However, these same topics have received much less

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