Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture
Agricultural diversification offers joint environmental and social benefits. Based on 24 studies across 11 countries, this guide shows how strategies for crops, livestock, soils, and water conservation enhance biodiversity, ecosystem services, yields, and food security while reducing risks.
Subject Tags
- Agriculture
- Nature-based solutions
- Biodiversity
Abstract
Agricultural simplification continues to expand at the expense of more diverse forms of agriculture. This simplification, for example, in the form of intensively managed monocultures, poses a risk to keeping the world within safe and just Earth system boundaries. Here, we estimated how agricultural diversification simultaneously affects social and environmental outcomes. Drawing from 24 studies in 11 countries across 2655 farms, we show how five diversification strategies focusing on livestock, crops, soils, noncrop plantings, and water conservation benefit social (e.g., human well-being, yields, and food security) and environmental (e.g., biodiversity, ecosystem services, and reduced environmental externalities) outcomes. We found that applying multiple diversification strategies creates more positive outcomes than individual management strategies alone. To realize these benefits, well-designed policies are needed to incentivize the adoption of multiple diversification strategies in unison.
Citation
Rasmussen, L. V., Grass, I., Mehrabi, Z., Smith, O. M., Bezner-Kerr, R., Blesh, J., ... & Kremen, C. (2024). Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture. Science, 384(6691), 87-93.
TNC Authors
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Christina M. Kennedy
Global Director of Spatial Conservation Science, Global Science
The Nature Conservancy
Email: ckennedy@tnc.org -
America Melo
Sustainable Productive Landscapes Specialist
The Nature Conservancy
Email: america.melo@tnc.org -
Diego José Lizcano Melo
The Nature Conservancy
Email: diego.navarrete@tnc.org