Comparing organic farming and land sparing: Optimizing yield and butterfly populations at a landscape scale

Ecology Letters

Volumn 13, Issue 11, 2010, Pages 1358-1367

  Hodgson, Jenny A ^a   Kunin, William E ^a   Thomas, Chris D ^b   Benton, Tim G ^a   Gabriel, Doreen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Biodiversity; Conservation; Easement; Land use; Protected area; Restoration; Sustainable agriculture; Trade off; Wildlife friendly farming; Yield

Indexed keywords

PAPILIONOIDEA;

EID: 78650346599     PISSN: 1461023X     EISSN: 14610248     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01528.x     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Asher, J., Warren, M., Fox, R., Harding, P., Jeffcoate, G. & Jeffcoate, S. (2001). The Millenium Atlas of Butterflies in Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
2. Badgley, C., Moghtader, J., Quintero, E., Zakem, E., Chappell, M.J., Aviles-Vazquez, K. et al. (2007). Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renew. Agric. Food Syst., 22, 86-108.
3. Bengtsson, J., Ahnstrom, J. & Weibull, A.C. (2005). The effects of organic agriculture on biodiversity and abundance: a metaanalysis. J. Appl. Ecol., 42, 261-269.
4. Burnham, K.P. & Anderson, D.R. (2002). Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: A Practical Information-Theoretic Approach. Springer-Verlag, New York.
5. Concepcion, E.D., Diaz, M. & Baquero, R.A. (2008). Effects of landscape complexity on the ecological effectiveness of agrienvironment schemes. Landsc. Ecol., 23, 135-148.
6. Defra (2008). Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2008. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (Northern Ireland), Welsh Assembly Government Department for Rural Affairs and Heritage, Scottish Government Rural and Environment Research and Analysis Directorate. Available at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/foodfarm/general/auk/documents/AUK-2008.pdf
7. Ekroos, J., Piha, M. & Tiainen, J. (2008). Role of organic and conventional field boundaries on boreal bumblebees and butterflies. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ., 124, 155-159.
8. EU (2007). Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 of 28 June 2007 on Organic Production and Labelling of Organic Products and Repealing Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91. In: Official journal of the European Union, 50, 1-23. Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:189:0001:0023:EN:PDF
9. Evans, L.T. (2005). The changing context for agricultural science. J. Agric. Sci., 143, 7-10.
10. Ewers, R.M., Scharlemann, J.P.W., Balmford, A. & Green, R.E. (2009). Do increases in agricultural yield spare land for nature? Glob. Change Biol., 15, 1716-1726.
11. FAO (2006). World Agriculture: Towards 2030 / 2050 - Interim Report - Prospects for Food, Nutrition, Agriculture and Major Commodity Groups. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome. Available at: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/userupload/esag/docs/InterimreportAT2050web.pdf
12. Feber, R.E., Firbank, L.G., Johnson, P.J. & Macdonald, D.W. (1997). The effects of organic farming on pest and non-pest butterfly abundance. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ., 64, 133-139.
13. Feber, R.E., Johnson, P.J., Firbank, L.G., Hopkins, A. & Macdonald, D.W. (2007). A comparison of butterfly populations on organically and conventionally managed farmland. J. Zool., 273, 30-39.
14. Fischer, J., Brosi, B., Daily, G.C., Ehrlich, P.R., Goldman, R., Goldstein, J. et al. (2008). Should agricultural policies encourage land sparing or wildlife-friendly farming? Front. Ecol. Environ.,6, 382-387.
15. Fuller, R.J., Norton, L.R., Feber, R.E., Johnson, P.J., Chamberlain, D.E., Joys, A.C. et al. (2005). Benefits of organic farming to biodiversity vary among taxa. Biol. Lett., 1, 431-434.
16. Gabriel, D., Carver, S.J., Durham, H., Kunin, W.E., Palmer, R.C., Sait, S.M. et al. (2009). The spatial aggregation of organic farming in England and its underlying environmental correlates. J. Appl. Ecol., 46, 323-333.
17. Gabriel, D., Sait, S.M., Hodgson, J.A., Schmutz, U., Kunin, W.E. & Benton, T.G. (2010). Scale matters: the impact of organic farming on biodiversity at different spatial scales. Ecol. Lett., 13, 858-869.
18. Gelfand, I., Snapp, S.S. & Robertson, G.P. (2010). Energy efficiency of conventional, organic, and alternative cropping systems for food and fuel at a site in the US Midwest. Environ. Sci. Technol., 44, 4006-4011.
19. Green, R.E., Cornell, S.J., Scharlemann, J.P.W. & Balmford, A. (2005). Farming and the fate of wild nature. Science, 307, 550-555.
20. Heller, N.E. & Zavaleta, E.S. (2009). Biodiversity management in the face of climate change: a review of 22 years of recommendations. Biol. Conserv., 142, 14.
21. Hodgson, J.A., Thomas, C.D., Wintle, B.A. & Moilanen, A. (2009). Climate change, connectivity and conservation decision making: back to basics. J. Appl. Ecol., 46, 964-969.
22. Hole, D.G., Perkins, A.J., Wilson, J.D., Alexander, I.H., Grice, F. & Evans, A.D. (2005). Does organic farming benefit biodiversity? Biol. Conserv., 122, 113-130.
23. Holzschuh, A., Steffan-Dewenter, I. & Tscharntke, T. (2008). Agricultural landscapes with organic crops support higher pollinator diversity. Oikos, 117, 354-361.
24. House of Commons (2009). Securing Food Supplies up to 2050: The Challenges Faced by the UK, Fourth Report of 2008-09 Session of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (HC 213-I). The Stationery Office Limited, London. Available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmenvfru/213/213i.pdf
25. Kiers, E.T., Leakey, R.R.B., Izac, A.M., Heinemann, J.A., Rosenthal, E., Nathan, D. et al. (2008). Ecology - agriculture at a crossroads. Science, 320, 320-321.
26. Kleijn, D. & Sutherland, W.J. (2003). How effective are European agri-environment schemes in conserving and promoting biodiversity? J. Appl. Ecol., 40, 947-969.
27. Kleijn, D., Baquero, R.A., Clough, Y., Diaz, M., De Esteban, J., Fernandez, F. et al. (2006). Mixed biodiversity benefits of agri-environment schemes in five European countries. Ecol. Lett., 9, 243-254.
28. Laurance, W.F. & Useche, D.C. (2009). Environmental Synergisms and Extinctions of Tropical Species. Conserv. Biol., 23, 1427-1437.
29. Magurran, A.E. (2004). Measuring Biological Diversity. Blackwell Science, Oxford.
30. Matson, P.A. & Vitousek, P.M. (2006). Agricultural intensification: will land spared from farming be land spared for nature? Conserv. Biol., 20, 709-710.
31. McInerny, G., Travis, J.M.J. & Dytham, C. (2007). Range shifting on a fragmented landscape. Ecol. Inform., 2, 1-8.
32. Merckx, T., Feber, R.E., Riordan, P., Townsend, M.C., Bourn, N.A.D., Parsons, M.S. et al. (2009). Optimizing the biodiversity gain from agri-environment schemes. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ., 130, 177-182.
33. Nagelkerke, N.J.D. (1991). A note on a general definition of the coefficient of determination. Biometrika, 78, 691-692.
34. Nieberg, H. & Offermann, F. (2000). Economic Performance of Organic Farms in Europe. Universität Hohenheim, Stuttgart-Hohenheim.
35. Norton, L., Johnson, P., Joys, A., Stuart, R., Chamberlain, D., Feber, R. et al. (2009). Consequences of organic and non-organic farming practices for field, farm and landscape complexity. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ., 129, 221-227.
36. Pinheiro, J.C. & Bates, D.M. (2000). Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS. Springer-Verlag, New York.
37. Pinheiro, J., Bates, D., DebRoy, S. & Sarkar, D. (2009). nlme: Linear and Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models (R Package Version 3.1-92). Institute for Statistics and Mathematics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna. Available at: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/nlme.
38. Pollard, E. (1977). A method for assessing changes in the abundance of butterflies. Biol. Conserv., 12, 115-134.
39. R Development Core Team (2009). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
40. Rudel, T.K., Schneider, L., Uriarte, M., Turner, B.L., DeFries, R., Lawrence, D. et al. (2009). Agricultural intensification and changes in cultivated areas, 1970-2005. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 106, 20675-20680.
41. Rundlof, M. & Smith, H.G. (2006). The effect of organic farming on butterfly diversity depends on landscape context. J. Appl. Ecol., 43, 1121-1127.
42. Rundlof, M., Bengtsson, J. & Smith, H.G. (2008). Local and landscape effects of organic farming on butterfly species richness and abundance. J. Appl. Ecol., 45, 813-820.
43. Thomas, C.D., Cameron, A., Green, R.E., Bakkenes, M., Beaumont, L.J., Collingham, Y.C. et al. (2004a). Extinction risk from climate change. Nature, 427, 145-148.
44. Thomas, J.A., Telfer, M.G., Roy, D.B., Preston, C.D., Greenwood, J.J.D., Asher, J. et al. (2004b). Comparative losses of British butterflies, birds, and plants and the global extinction crisis. Science, 303, 1879-1881.
45. Tilman, D., Fargione, J., Wolff, B., D'Antonio, C., Dobson, A., Howarth, R. et al. (2001). Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change. Science, 292, 281-284.
46. Tscharntke, T., Klein, A.M., Kruess, A., Steffan-Dewenter, I. & Thies, C. (2005). Landscape perspectives on agricultural intensification and biodiversity - ecosystem service management. Ecol. Lett., 8, 857-874.
47. Vickery, J.A., Feber, R.E. & Fuller, R.J. (2009). Arable field margins managed for biodiversity conservation: a review of food resource provision for farmland birds. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ., 133, 1-13.
48. Weibull, A.C., Bengtsson, J. & Nohlgren, E. (2000). Diversity of butterflies in the agricultural landscape: the role of farming system and landscape heterogeneity. Ecography, 23, 743-750.
49. Whittingham, M.J. (2007). Will agri-environment schemes deliver substantial biodiversity gain, and if not why not? J. Appl. Ecol., 44, 1-5.
50. Wood, R., Lenzen, M., Dey, C. & Lundie, S. (2006). A comparative study of some environmental impacts of conventional and organic farming in Australia. Agric. Syst., 89, 324-348.