Biodiversity and pollination benefits trade off against profit in an intensive farming system

Jeroen Scheper, Isabelle Badenhausser (), Jochen Kantelhardt, Stefan Kirchweger, Ignasi Bartomeus, Vincent Bretagnolle (), Yann Clough, Nicolas Gross (), Montserrat Vilà, Carlos Zaragoza-Trello and David Kleijn
Additional contact information
Jeroen Scheper: WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]
Isabelle Badenhausser: P3F - Unité de Recherche Pluridisciplinaire Prairies et Plantes Fourragères - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Jochen Kantelhardt: BOKU - Universität für Bodenkultur Wien = University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences [Vienne, Autriche]
Ignasi Bartomeus: EBD - Estación Biológica de Doñana - CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas [España] = Spanish National Research Council [Spain]
Vincent Bretagnolle: CEBC - Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé - UMR 7372 - ULR - La Rochelle Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Yann Clough: Lund University
Nicolas Gross: UREP - Unité Mixte de Recherche sur l'Ecosystème Prairial - UMR - VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Montserrat Vilà: EBD - Estación Biológica de Doñana - CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas [España] = Spanish National Research Council [Spain], Universidad de Sevilla = University of Seville
Carlos Zaragoza-Trello: EBD - Estación Biológica de Doñana - CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas [España] = Spanish National Research Council [Spain]
David Kleijn: WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]

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Abstract: Agricultural expansion and intensification have boosted global food production but have come at the cost of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Biodiversity-friendly farming that boosts ecosystem services, such as pollination and natural pest control, is widely being advocated to maintain and improve agricultural productivity while safeguarding biodiversity. A vast body of evidence showing the agronomic benefits of enhanced ecosystem service delivery represent important incentives to adopt practices enhancing biodiversity. However, the costs of biodiversity-friendly management are rarely taken into account and may represent a major barrier impeding uptake by farmers. Whether and how biodiversity conservation, ecosystem service delivery, and farm profit can go hand in hand is unknown. Here, we quantify the ecological, agronomic, and net economic benefits of biodiversity-friendly farming in an intensive grassland–sunflower system in Southwest France. We found that reducing land-use intensity on agricultural grasslands drastically enhances flower availability and wild bee diversity, including rare species. Biodiversity-friendly management on grasslands furthermore resulted in an up to 17% higher revenue on neighboring sunflower fields through positive effects on pollination service delivery. However, the opportunity costs of reduced grassland forage yields consistently exceeded the economic benefits of enhanced sunflower pollination. Our results highlight that profitability is often a key constraint hampering adoption of biodiversity-based farming and uptake critically depends on society's willingness to pay for associated delivery of public goods such as biodiversity.

Keywords: agroecology; ecosystem services; biodiversity-friendly farming; land-use intensity; wild bees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dcm and nep-env
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04167122v1
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Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023, 120 (28), pp.e2212124120. ⟨10.1073/pnas.2212124120⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04167122

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2212124120

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