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Smart land-use planning could ease the conflict between agricultural production and nature conservation. A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Münster integrated global datasets on the geographical distributions and ecological requirements of thousands of animal species with detailed information on the production of the world’s major agricultural crops. The results were published in Global Change Biology.
Increasing agricultural production usually leads to various negative side effects in agricultural landscapes, such as local decline in wildlife and loss of ecosystem functions. But what would happen if agricultural growth would be focused on areas of the world where only a few animal species would be affected?
The researchers evaluated how far global biodiversity loss could be minimized by such planning. They found that 88 percent of the biodiversity that is expected to be lost under future agricultural intensification could be avoided if global land use was spatially optimized.
“However, global optimization implies that species-rich countries, mainly in the tropics, would be more responsible for safeguarding the world’s natural resources – at the expense of their own production opportunities and economic development,” says lead author Lukas Egli of Göttingen University and UFZ.
This applies mainly to countries that are highly dependent on agriculture. “Unless such conflicting national interests can be somehow accommodated in international sustainability policies, global cooperation seems unlikely and might generate new socioeconomic dependencies.”
Lukas Egli et al. Winners and losers of national and global efforts to reconcile agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation. Global Change Biology 2018. Doi: 10.1111/gcb.14076.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday March 11 2018, @07:52PM (5 children)
One would have to overcome all the reasons that farms are located in the places they're at.
Most farms are owned by giant agribusiness that desire nothing more than to give reacharounds to their stockholders
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @10:26PM (2 children)
The political factors aside, the first step would be to change crop subsidies to be proportional to FDA dietary requirements. That would shift profitability from industrial agriculture, to high intensity agriculture.
High intensity agriculture produces more per acre, and sequesters more CO2 per acre than industrial agriculture, but with a disproportioniately high labor cost. The labor differential will eventually be equalized with robotics. But you have to provide the profit motive for that robotics market to ever develop. The simple truth of it, is that if there isn't a major correction in the way we farm in the next 20 years, some of the flyover states are going to start looking like the Sudan. (which was once a jungle, but is now a desert, due to hundreds of years of agricultural mismanagement.)
More likely though, is the agrocorps will just jack up prices to make up the revenue difference, and the fed will jack up the subsidies to keep the shelf prices down, at the expense of increased tax burden. Of course that is a loosing proposition, because eventually the subsidies won't be able to keep up with inflation, and the midwest will still look like the Sahara.
But hey, at least the same CEO's will still be in charge.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 12 2018, @12:09PM (1 child)
> That would shift profitability from industrial agriculture, to high intensity agriculture.
Why?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @04:35PM
Because high intensity agro is going to replace industrial agro anyway. If you want to know how we are going to farm in 50 years, take a look at countries with higher population densities. The only thing that is different by doing it early by changing crop subsidy structures, is that we avoid creating more permanant damage than there already is.
The reason we eat as much corn and soy as we do, (which causes health problems) is because crop subsidies are optimized for an unhealthy diet. But that is also slowly moving the flyover states towards an ecological cascade failure, due to the dwindling water supply. Which is again, caused by industrial agro techniques.
The permaculturists are right. And farmers all know that the business starts and ends with good soil management practices. But the big farms in this country, aren't being run by farmers. They are being run by bankers.
In 1928 we produced more food per capita that ever before in the history of the world. In 1929 the banks crashed the market by perpetrating massive insurance frauds. (which was also the cause of the 2008 stock market crash). In 1929 people were starving in the streets while grain rotted in silos. Much like housing was empty after 2008.
Stability comes from market diversity. The food supply market has been getting less diverse for a long long time. Fix that or place your bets.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 12 2018, @11:10AM (1 child)
Greetings from ex-Soviet eastern Europe.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @03:47PM
I hope you enjoy rye and potatoes, cuz that's all half of Europe can produce without imports from corrupt shitholes.