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There are numerous studies and publications about sustainable agriculture. Many papers argue that sustainable agriculture is necessary, and analyze how this goal could be achieved. At the same time, studies question the sustainability of agriculture. Several obstacles, including theoretical, methodological, personal, and practical issues, hinder or slow down implementation, resulting in the so-called implementation gap. This study addresses potential obstacles that limit the implementation of sustainable agriculture in practice. To overcome the obstacles and to improve implementation, different solutions and actions are required. This study aims to illustrate ways of minimizing or removing obstacles and how to overcome the implementation gap. Unfortunately, the diversity of obstacles and their complexity mean there are no quick and easy solutions. A broader approach that addresses different dimensions and stakeholders is required. Areas of action include institutionalization, assessment and system development, education and capacity building, and social and political support. To realize the suggestions and recommendations and to improve implementation, transdisciplinary work and cooperation between many actors are required.

Farmland species provide key ecological services that support agricultural production, but are under threat from agricultural intensification and mechanization. In order to design effective measures to mitigate agricultural impact, simultaneous investigations of different taxonomic groups across several regions are required. Therefore, four contrasting taxonomic groups were investigated: plants, earthworms, spiders and bees (wild bees and bumblebees), which represent different trophic levels and provide different ecological services. To better understand underlying patterns, three community measurements for each taxonomic group were considered: abundance, species richness and species composition. In four European regions, ten potential environmental drivers of the four taxonomic groups were tested and assigned to three groups of drivers: geographic location (farm, region), agricultural management (crop type, mineral nitrogen input, organic nitrogen input, mechanical field operations and pesticide applications) and surrounding landscape in a 250 m buffer zone (diversity of habitats in the surroundings, proportion of arable fields and proportion of non-productive, non-woody habitats). First, the variation in abundance, species richness and species composition from 167 arable sites was partitioned to compare the relative contribution of the three groups of drivers (geographic location, agricultural management and surrounding landscape). Second, generalized linear mixedeffects models were applied to estimate the effect of the individual explanatory variables on abundance and species richness. Our analysis showed a dominant effect of geographic location in all four taxonomic groups and a strong influence of agricultural management on plants, spiders and bees.The effect of the surrounding landscape was of minor importance and inconsistent in our data. We conclude that in European arable fields, the avoidance of mineral nitrogen and pesticides is beneficial for biodiversity, and that species protection measures should take into account regional characteristics and the community structure of the investigated taxonomic groups.

International audienceTo evaluate progress on political biodiversity objectives, biodiversity monitoring provides information on whether intended results are being achieved. Despite scientific proof that monitoring and evaluation increase the (cost) efficiency of policy measures, cost estimates for monitoring schemes are seldom available, hampering their inclusion in policy programme budgets. Empirical data collected from 12 case studies across Europe were used in a power analysis to estimate the number of farms that would need to be sampled per major farm type to detect changes in species richness over time for four taxa (vascular plants, earthworms, spiders and bees). A sampling design was developed to allocate spatially, across Europe, the farms that should be sampled. Cost estimates are provided for nine monitoring scenarios with differing robustness for detecting temporal changes in species numbers. These cost estimates are compared with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget (2014-2020) to determine the budgetallocation required for the proposed farmland biodiversity monitoring. Results show that the bee indicator requires the highest number of farms to be sampled and the vascular plant indicator the lowest. The costs for the nine farmland biodiversity monitoring scenarios corresponded to 001%-074% of the total CAP budget and to 004%-248% of the CAP budget specifically allocated to environmental targets.Synthesis and applications. The results of the cost scenarios demonstrate that, based on the taxa and methods used in this study, a Europe-wide farmland biodiversity monitoring scheme would require a modest share of the Common Agricultural Policy budget. The monitoring scenarios are flexible and can be adapted or complemented with alternate data collection options (e.g. at national scale or voluntary efforts), data mobilization, data integration or modelling efforts. Editor's Choic

Conversion of semi-natural habitats, such as field margins, fallows, hedgerows, grassland, woodlots and forests, to agricultural land could increase agricultural production and help meet rising global food demand. Yet, the extent to which such habitat loss would impact biodiversity and wild species is unknown. Here we survey species richness for four taxa (vascular plants, earthworms, spiders, wild bees) and agricultural yield across a range of arable, grassland, mixed, horticulture, permanent crop, for organic and non-organic agricultural land on 169 farms across 10 European regions. We find that semi-natural habitats currently constitute 23% of land area with 49% of species unique to these habitats. We estimate that conversion of semi-natural land that achieves a 10% increase in agricultural production will have the greatest impact on biodiversity in arable systems and the least impact in grassland systems, with organic practices having better species retention than non-organic practices. Our findings will help inform sustainable agricultural development.