Project
Designing biodiverse agroecosystems: evidence for net impacts of diversification
An important design principle of innovative nature-positive farming systems is diversification: enlarging the community of harvested crops and/or livestock and non-harvested organisms that supply essential services (together referred to as the agrobiodiversity) that is combined either at farm level or within a single field. The idea is that this enhances sustainability by increasing system performance in relation to e.g. higher resilience to stressors, an enhanced natural biodiversity and enhanced supply of ecosystem services. Yet, while these benefits make sense intuitively, data-based evidence is so far sparse with respect to whether benefits are realized, to which extent and under which conditions.
Focusing on agroforestry ecosystem (i.e. farming systems that include woody crops), our project aims to provide an evidence base for consequences of diversification practices at both farm-level and field-level on productivity, ecosystem services, natural biodiversity and food safety. We will investigate synergies and trade-offs between these aspects and develop a multi-criteria assessment framework to assist decisions on optimal designs of diversified farming systems. Additionally, to ensure that products from mixed farms can efficiently be integrated into broader markets and meet demands, we will assist the development of innovative value chain models and agrologistics frameworks.
In this project we aim to gather scientific evidence for, and demonstrate the impacts of increased agrobiodiversity on resilience, natural biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery, including food safety values. Since hard data is currently lacking to underpin such relations, we will invest in a multi-year monitoring campaign, in close collaboration with and building on existing field labs and farmer networks. We comparing sets of contrasting farming systems, we will explore effects the effects of different aspects of agrobiodiversity, including at least the inclusion of perennial woody crops (trees, shrubs) and species rich grassland in either arable farming or livestock production, and potentially also the number of crop or livestock species included in the system. We will also compare the impacts of mixed production at farm level (i.e. on different fields) with integration of the same components in a single field.
To further explore the consequences of various design options with respect to diversification, we aim to develop a multi-criteria assessment framework. This includes the visualization of trade-offs between different aspects of sustainability (people, planet, profit), focusing on farm-level factors such as biodiversity gains, productivity, health and resilience, and economic feasibility. Thereby we aim to assist decision making for both farmers and policy makers.
Furthermore we aim to identify key boundary conditions that determine the realization of net beneficial designs with respect to usage of adaptive breeds, (a)biotic landscape circumstances, agrologistic requirements for a diverse range of products, market chains and customer demands.