Large‐scale trade‐off between agricultural intensification and crop pollination services

Abstract

Unprecedented growth in human populations has required the intensification of agriculture to enhance crop productivity, but this was achieved at a major cost to biodiversity. There is abundant local‐scale evidence that both pollinator diversity and pollination services decrease with increasing agricultural intensification. This raises concerns regarding food security, as two‐thirds of the world's major food crops are pollinator‐dependent. Whether such local findings scale up and affect crop production over larger scales is still being debated. Here, we analyzed a country‐wide dataset of the 54 major crops in France produced over the past two decades and found that benefits of agricultural intensification decrease with increasing pollinator dependence, to the extent that intensification failed to increase the yield of pollinator‐dependent crops and decreased the stability of their yield over time. This indicates that benefits from agricultural intensification may be offset by reductions in pollination services, and supports the need for an ecological intensification of agriculture through optimization of ecosystem services.

Effects of landscape configuration on mapping ecosystem service capacity: a review of evidence and a case study in Scotland

“…In the UK, returns from crop production are reduced, but show less annual variation in landscapes with a higher diversity of agricultural land uses (Abson et al 2013). Increases in crop production in France-following the disappearance of seminatural habitat and linear elements-decline with increasing dependency of the crop on pollination (Deguines et al 2014). Crop production is reduced at field edges, especially when the field edge is adjacent to tree lines or hedges (Sparkes et al 1998;Foereid et al 2002), but in general effects are considered to be local and small compared to total crop production (Borin et al 2010).…”

Weeds for bees? A review

“…suitable habitats for nesting and nearby floral resource. Pollinator persistence depends, therefore, on maintaining high-quality habitats around farms and on local management practices that may offset the impact of intensive monoculture (Deguines et al 2014). There is a correlation between landscape complexity (including semi-natural features), floral diversity and availability and bee diversity (Duelli and Obrist 2003;Le Féon et al 2010).…”

An expert-assisted citizen science program involving agricultural high schools provides national patterns on bee species assemblages

“…The details of how to implement this indicator were at the discretion of each state (CEC 2006). In France, indicators aggregating statistics of agricultural holdings were calculated at the municipality level (Pointereau et al 2010;Doxa et al 2012;Deguines et al 2014). The national mean for the overall intensity index was 12.20 (S.E.…”

“…For studies at the regional or national scales, this may not be possible and one must seek for environmental data already available (see also Deguines et al 2012Deguines et al , 2014.…”