Bio-diversification of farming systems: Potential role of eco-agricultural farmland complexes

Abstract

Mainstream farming systems within industrialized countries are often characterized as producing few specialized products through significant addition of external inputs (Duru et al. 2015) with little green infrastructure (GI) (McWilliam & Gregorini 2018). We define GI as vegetation or water-related networks (often not considered as part of production by farmers), that provide key ecosystem services and functions to farmers, communities and markets. Many of these mainstream systems result in serious ecosystem impacts at multiple spatial scales, such as reduced water quality and availability, loss of indigenous biodiversity, loss of landscape character and cultural heritage, and reduced product quality, human health and system resilience (United Nations 2011; Godfray et al. 2010). Government regulations are increasingly strict with respect to some of these impacts, increasing their compliance costs for farmers (e.g. McWilliam & Balzarova 2017), who are looking for viable strategies to mitigate them. Meanwhile, communities and markets are demanding the mitigation of impacts beyond those of regulatory focus, and would like farming systems to be more positively integrated into their communities in support of high quality public ecosystem services (e.g. Marsden 2012), such as the provision of habitats in support for indigenous biodiversity, or place-specific regional branding.