Reconciling agriculture and conservation is one of this century's greatest challenges.
- Ben Phalan
Agricultural expansion is a leading cause of wild species loss and greenhouse gas emissions. However, as farming practices and technologies continue to be refined, more food can be produced per unit of land – meaning less area is needed for agriculture and more land can be 'spared' for natural habitats.
While this may sound like good news for nature, conservation scientists warn that, without the right policies, higher farm yields could be used to maximise short-term profits and stimulate greater demand, resulting in less wilderness and more unnecessary consumption and waste.
Now, leading conservationists writing in the journal Science are calling on policymakers to harness the potential of higher-yield farming to spare land for conservation, instead of solely producing more food and profit. By minimising the footprint of farming in this way, vital land could be spared for maintaining and restoring the rapidly dwindling natural world.
The authors describe a series of "land-sparing mechanisms" that link yield increases with habitat protection, such as land-use zoning and smart subsidy schemes, along with real-world examples that show how they can work – from India to Latin America.
They write that replicating these mechanisms elsewhere depends on "the political will to deliver strong environmental governance".
"Reconciling agriculture and conservation is one of this century's greatest challenges," said Dr Ben Phalan from Cambridge University's Department of Zoology.
"To help meet that challenge, we need to move on from thinking about higher yields simply as a means to produce more food, and to use them to free up land for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services," said Phalan, who authored the policy paper with colleagues from Cambridge, the RSPB and Brazil.
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Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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