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. 2014 May 1;64(5):404-415.
doi: 10.1093/biosci/biu037. Epub 2014 Apr 8.

Farming for Ecosystem Services: An Ecological Approach to Production Agriculture

G Philip Robertson  1 , Katherine L Gross  1 , Stephen K Hamilton  1 , Douglas A Landis  1 , Thomas M Schmidt  1 , Sieglinde S Snapp  1 , Scott M Swinton  1
Affiliations

Farming for Ecosystem Services: An Ecological Approach to Production Agriculture

G Philip Robertson et al. Bioscience. .

Abstract

A balanced assessment of ecosystem services provided by agriculture requires a systems-level socioecological understanding of related management practices at local to landscape scales. The results from 25 years of observation and experimentation at the Kellogg Biological Station long-term ecological research site reveal services that could be provided by intensive row-crop ecosystems. In addition to high yields, farms could be readily managed to contribute clean water, biocontrol and other biodiversity benefits, climate stabilization, and long-term soil fertility, thereby helping meet society's need for agriculture that is economically and environmentally sustainable. Midwest farmers-especially those with large farms-appear willing to adopt practices that deliver these services in exchange for payments scaled to management complexity and farmstead benefit. Surveyed citizens appear willing to pay farmers for the delivery of specific services, such as cleaner lakes. A new farming for services paradigm in US agriculture seems feasible and could be environmentally significant.

Keywords: agriculture; biocontrol; ecosystem services; greenhouse gas mitigation; water quality.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Grain yields at the Kellogg Biological Station under no-till, reduced-input, and biologically based management relative to conventional management (the dotted horizontal line) over the 23-year period of 1989–2012. The absolute yields for conventional management were similar to the county and US national average yields. The error bars represent the standard error.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Biocontrol services from coccinellids as a function of landscape diversity (a) and the dominance of corn within 1.5 kilometers (km) of soybean fields (b). Sources: Panel (a) is adapted from Gardiner and colleagues (2009); panel (b) is reprinted from Landis and colleagues (2008).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Annual nitrate leaching losses (in kilograms of nitrate-nitrogen per hectare per year) and cumulative drainage (inset; in millimeters) from the Kellogg Biological Station cropping and successional systems between 1995 and 2006. Source: Adapted from Syswerda and colleagues (2012).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Net global warming impact (in grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per square meter per year) of cropped and unmanaged Kellogg Biological Station ecosystems. The annual crops include corn–soybean–wheat rotations.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
The increase in soil methanotroph diversity (in operational taxonomic units; the open symbols) and atmospheric methane consumption (in grams of methane-carbon per hectare per day; the closed symbols) in ecological succession from row-crop fields (Ag, green) through early (yellow) and midsuccessional (blue) fields to mature forest (orange) at the Kellogg Biological Station. Source: The data are from Levine and colleagues (2011).
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Seasonal variation in soil moisture (in cubic centimeters per cubic centimeter) in the conventional and no-till systems during the 2012 soybean growing season. The 6-week drought began after a 3 June rainfall (R on the figure). The error bars represent the standard error (n = 6).
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
The relative importance to Michigan farmers and to society (as ranked by the farmers) of various environmental benefits potentially provided by agriculture. Source: Adapted from Swinton and colleagues (2014a).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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