Contribution of agroecological farming systems to the delivery of ecosystem services.

Ecosystem service bundle Multifunctional Sustainable agriculture Synergy Trade-off Transition

Journal

Journal of environmental management
ISSN: 1095-8630
Titre abrégé: J Environ Manage
Pays: England
ID NLM: 0401664

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
15 Apr 2020
Historique:
received: 11 10 2018
revised: 17 04 2019
accepted: 12 09 2019
pubmed: 13 2 2020
medline: 26 2 2020
entrez: 13 2 2020
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

Agroecology has been suggested as a promising concept for reconciling agricultural production and environmental sustainability by optimizing ecological processes that deliver ecosystem services (ES) to replace external inputs. While this statement is widely agreed upon, few assessments of real-life conditions exist that assess multiple ES simultaneously. This paper provides an assessment of seven ES based on 14 indicators in three agroecological farming systems (AFS) and thirteen of their adjacent conventional farming systems (CFS). Based on field-scale measurements spread over three years, our findings suggest that the studied AFS succeed in providing a wider array of regulating services than their neighboring CFS. Soil aggregate stability and soil respiration rates are in general more supported in AFS, which also show lower pest abundance. On the other hand, CFS show higher grain production and higher performance for two out of three fodder quality indices. While this 'productivity gap' may be due to the still-evolving state of the studied AFS, we nuance this through the lens of an emerging paradigm to assess farming system multi-performance. It is now argued that we need to shift from a volume-focused production system to a system that also values the ecological processes underpinning crop production and other benefits to society. Based on our findings, we recommend future work to iterate our initiative, including several indicators per service and embed these into a wider context of co-adaptive science-practice to further develop context-specific and user-useful research.

Identifiants

pubmed: 32046879
pii: S0301-4797(19)31294-0
doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109576
pii:
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

IM

Pagination

109576

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Auteurs

Fanny Boeraeve (F)

Biodiversity and Landscapes Unit, TERRA Teaching and Research Center, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liege, Passage des Déportés 2, 5030, Gembloux, Belgium. Electronic address: f.boeraeve@uliege.be.

Nicolas Dendoncker (N)

Department of Geography, Institute Transitions, University of Namur, Rue de Bruxelles 61, 5000, Namur, Belgium.

Jean-Thomas Cornélis (JT)

Water, Soil and Plant Exchanges Unit, TERRA Teaching and Research Center, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liege, Belgium.

Florine Degrune (F)

Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Marc Dufrêne (M)

Biodiversity and Landscapes Unit, TERRA Teaching and Research Center, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liege, Passage des Déportés 2, 5030, Gembloux, Belgium.

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Classifications MeSH