Review
Ecological Intensification: Bridging the Gap between Science and Practice

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.11.002Get rights and content

Highlights

Ecological intensification aims to harness ecosystem services to sustain agricultural production while minimising adverse effects on the environment.

Ecological intensification is championed by scientists as a nature-based alternative to high-input agriculture but meets with little interest from growers.

Scientific evidence underlying ecological intensification is often unconvincing to growers, as it is based on small-scale studies of ecological processes unlinked from agricultural production.

Grower interest can be enhanced by evidence of the agronomic and economic benefits most relevant to farmers and measured at the scales of operation of farm enterprises.

In addition to concrete benefits, concerns of the general public about adverse effects of industrial farming can promote adoption of ecological intensification, both directly and indirectly, by enhancing political will to use regulatory instruments.

There is worldwide concern about the environmental costs of conventional intensification of agriculture. Growing evidence suggests that ecological intensification of mainstream farming can safeguard food production, with accompanying environmental benefits; however, the approach is rarely adopted by farmers. Our review of the evidence for replacing external inputs with ecosystem services shows that scientists tend to focus on processes (e.g., pollination) rather than outcomes (e.g., profits), and express benefits at spatio-temporal scales that are not always relevant to farmers. This results in mismatches in perceived benefits of ecological intensification between scientists and farmers, which hinders its uptake. We provide recommendations for overcoming these mismatches and highlight important additional factors driving uptake of nature-based management practices, such as social acceptability of farming.

Keywords

agricultural production
biodiversity
ecosystem services
farmer behaviour

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