• COP16

Research Articles Can Agroecology Improve Nature’s Pulse?

Agroecology is a holistic approach to farming and mimics the complexity and resilience of natural ecosystems. Therefore, agroecology as a science, practice, and movement proposes a spiral-up strategy that treats agriculture as a beneficiary of and major contributor to biodiversity. For example, a multitude of plant and animal species contribute to agriculture by improving soil health, nutrient cycling, pollination, suppressing weeds, and controlling pests. Also, a wide range of social-ecological-agronomic practices contribute to biodiversity. For example, exchanging and conserving the genetic material of traditional cultivated species or breeds, maintaining natural habitats to provide shelter and resources to migratory species, or covering soils to enhance soil biodiversity.  

Therefore, alternative systems for producing healthy and affordable food while contributing to conservation goals exist. However, the support for these alternative systems remains limited due to concerns about their potential underperformance in yields compared to conventional agriculture. Nevertheless, focusing solely on yield as a measure of agricultural performance is a dangerous strategy. This metric fails to capture the broader impacts of farming systems on social and environmental well-being. It's like assessing a person's overall health based solely on their blood pressure; while informative, it ignores crucial factors such as mental, physical, financial, and emotional health. 

Research needs to catch up as well. For example, research in diversified farming systems frequently monitors productivity in terms of only the main crop’s yield and during short periods of time (e.g., one year), telling an incomplete story. Moreover, trade-off analysis tend to be unbalanced, with a strong emphasis on productivity rather than environmental and socio-cultural services and most of the current scientific knowledge is generated from field experiments that are biased toward certain cropping systems and geographical areas, also providing an incomplete picture. 

Despite these bottlenecks and incomplete picture, evidence on the performance of alternative systems is promising, showing multiple options for safeguarding and even boosting yields under agroecology. For example, diversified farming systems – one example of adhering to certain agroecological principles – can contribute to multiple benefits without compromising yields, and can be even more profitable than monoculture systems. Evidence also points out that diversified farms and landscapes boost biodiversity by providing year-round resources for species (e.g., shelter, food) and that seminatural habitats in agricultural landscapes provide key benefits to humans and agriculture. 

However, trade-offs between yield and biodiversity are not uncommon, particularly in the early years after moving away from simplified farming patterns. Achieving biodiversity and yield gains in tandem requires careful design, and interventions will be needed when trade-offs are unavoidable to ensure not only farmers and society share the costs of safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem health.  It's clear that key knowledge gaps exist, and more transdisciplinary transformative research to shine a light on managing agriculture in ways that benefit humans and nature is needed.