Diversifying Farming Practices Offers Environmental, Social and Economic Benefits

A new study published in the journal Science(link is external) that shows increasing agricultural diversification simultaneously benefits both environmental and social outcomes, creating multiple win-win situations.

This first-of-its-kind study synthesized the work of 58 researchers from 24 studies, across 11 countries and 2655 farms. Historically, research on diversified farming systems tended to look at the outcomes of using diversification practices on environmental outcomes alone, but this study added key socioeconomic metrics like yield, food security and human well-being.  While potential tradeoffs between environmental and social outcomes have not been well understood, this comprehensive study shows very few negative consequences to diversifying farms—in fact, when more diversification practices are used more environmental and social benefits were identified, particularly for biodiversity and food security, without reducing yields.

One coauthor, Ingo Grass of the University of Hohenheim explains, "Agricultural diversification has been accused of perhaps being good for biodiversity, but having a few negative aspects too – especially with regards to not being able to achieve sufficiently high yields. But what we actually see, is that there is no reduction in yield from diversified agriculture – not even when we include data from large-scale European agriculture."

Measuring the impacts on social (e.g., human well-being, yields, and food security) and environmental (e.g., biodiversity, ecosystem services, and reduced environmental externalities) outcomes, the study assessed five diversification strategies: 

1. Livestock inclusion and diversification (e.g., managed mammals, birds, bees, and fish)
2. Temporal crop diversification (e.g., crop rotation and cover crops)
3. Soil conservation and fertility management (e.g., compost application)
4. Non-crop plantings (e.g., flower strips and hedgerows)
5. Water conservation (e.g., contour farming)

The study found that applying multiple diversification strategies creates more positive outcomes than individual management strategies alone. According to the lead author(link is external), “Our results from this comprehensive study are surprisingly clear. While we see very few negative effects from agricultural diversification, there are many significant benefits. This is particularly the case when two, three or more measures are combined. The more, the better, especially when it comes to biodiversity and food security.”