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Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2021

Effects of farm type on food production, landscape openness, grassland biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions in mixed agricultural-forestry regions

Olen, Niklas Boke; Roger, Fabian; Brady, Mark, V; Larsson, Cecilia; Andersson, Georg K. S.; Ekroos, Johan; Caplat, Paul; Smith, Henrik G.; Danhardt, Juliana; Clough, Yann

Abstract

Context: The global demand for food is expected to continue increasing for decades, which may drive both agricultural expansion and intensification. The associated environmental impacts are potentially considerable but will depend on how the agricultural sector develops. Currently, there are contrasting regional developments in agriculture; expansion and/or intensification in some regions and abandonment in others, as well as changes in the type of farming. However, the environmental consequences of changes in farm type are not well understood.Objective: We have evaluated the impacts of farm type on food production and three key environmental variables & mdash;landscape openness, grassland biodiversity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions & mdash;in three marginal agricultural regions in Sweden.Methods: We do this by first dividing the population of farms in each region into types, based on their land-use and livestock holdings using an innovative clustering method. Thereafter we analysed changes in production activities for farm types over time and evaluated the environmental and food-production impacts, where landscape openness is quantified using a novel indicator.Results and conclusion: Our results show that there is not one single farm type that would simultaneously maximize food production, grassland biodiversity, and landscape openness, whilst minimizing GHG emissions. However, there exists considerable potential to manage the trade-offs between food production and these environmental variables. For example, by reducing land use for dairying and instead increasing both cropping for food production and extensive livestock grazing to maintain landscape openness and biodiversity-rich semi natural pastures, it would keep food production at similar levels.Significance: Our farm typology allows us to assess the multifunctionality of farming, by relating contrasting production activities to multiple ecosystem services, grassland biodiversity and GHG emissions for informing policy towards more sustainable agriculture. We have demonstrated this with examples under Swedish conditions, but it should to a large extent also be applicable for other countries.

Keywords

Agriculture; Biodiversity; Food production; Landscape openness; Farm typology; Ecosystem services

Published in

Agricultural Systems
2021, Volume: 189, article number: 103071
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

    Sustainable Development Goals

    SDG13 Climate action
    SDG2 Zero hunger

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Agricultural Science
    Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use

    Publication identifier

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103071

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/111439