Trends in Ecology & Evolution
ReviewEcological intensification: harnessing ecosystem services for food security
Section snippets
Meeting growing demands for agricultural products
As part of the Green Revolution, modern agriculture has simplified traditional agroecosystems and replaced biological functions, originally provided by diverse communities of organisms, with increased external inputs of energy and agrochemicals. Industrial forms of modern agriculture aim to remove limitations to plant productivity mainly by irrigation and adding inorganic nutrients, by crop breeding to improve the genetic basis for plant productivity, mechanical loosening of the soil structure
Ecological intensification with ecosystem services
Ecological intensification is based on managing service-providing organisms that make a quantifiable direct or indirect contribution to agricultural production. The supporting and regulating ecosystem services provided by these organisms can be incorporated into cropping systems, such that production is maximized while environmental impacts are minimized through the decrease, but not necessarily exclusion, of anthropogenic inputs, such as inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, energy, and
Relation between yield and supporting and regulating ecosystem services
Crop yield has been defined as a provisioning ecosystem service, but the yield that is harvested in a given location depends largely on several supporting and regulating services (Box 1; Figure 1, Figure 2a,b) 8, 9. Attainable or potential yield level (Figure 1) of a locally adapted crop cultivar depends ultimately on available solar radiation and temperature. The difference between this and the actual yield that a farmer obtains represents the yield gap, which is widened by lack of water, lack
Soil formation and nutrient cycling
Ecosystem services linked to agricultural soils are crucial for yield formation and are provided by several inter-related processes that govern decomposition, soil formation, structure, moisture, and cycling of mineral nutrients and carbon. Soil services provide global resources, such as water storage and purification, and carbon storage and gas regulation that mitigates climate change. Indeed, more than one-fifth of the global soil carbon pool is stored in agricultural soils [24], which is
Biological pest control
Losses to weeds and animal pests have been estimated to be approximately 30% in maize and 14–35% in wheat, despite control efforts, and yield losses worldwide are not decreasing despite increased use of pesticides [48]. Not long after the large-scale introduction of pesticides during the 1940s, their overuse and landscape changes led to secondary pests, pest resurgence, and, in some cases, a complete collapse of crop production systems due to eroded natural pest regulation 49, 50, 51. These and
Biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services
An often held, but not universally true, assumption of the ecosystem services concept is that service delivery increases with the level of intactness, complexity, and/or species richness of ecosystems [77]. Originally, evidence of the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem services came from experimental studies of biodiversity function, which examined communities whose structures often differed markedly from those providing services in real landscapes [78]. More recent studies show that
Safeguarding food security with ecological intensification
It remains an outstanding challenge to ensure simultaneously stock, stability, and resilience in food production and balance this with minimal impacts on the environment, biodiversity, and all the other benefits that agricultural landscapes provide. To illustrate how ecological intensification can be implemented while avoiding potential negative trade-offs, we use an adaptation of the natural resource management framework of ‘safe space’ presented by Beddington et al. [88]. This scheme depicts
Concluding remarks
Our review demonstrates that modern agriculture will benefit from a more explicit consideration of ecological processes, where ecological intensification has potential to ensure productive and environmentally friendly agriculture globally. Multidisciplinary research approaches will be necessary to address critical knowledge gaps (Box 2). Understanding underpinning ecological processes and addressing how one can harness functional biodiversity to secure food production without damaging the wider
Acknowledgments
We thank Henrik G. Smith, Claire Kremen, and an anonymous reviewer for constructive comments. The contribution by R.B., D.K., and S.G.P. was made in the framework of the European Union (EU) FP7 projects LIBERATION (grant 311781) and STEP (grant 244090). In addition, R.B. was funded by the Swedish Research Council for Environmental, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS).
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