Global food production has resulted in significant biodiversity loss, new research shows
As the world grapples with the challenges of climate change and food insecurity, the need for sustainable food production has taken on a new urgency.
But many current agricultural practices are at odds with the ecosystems they rely on, jeopardizing the long-term sustainability of our food systems and the biodiversity that underpins and surrounds them.
The headlong pursuit of agricultural productivity has made it possible to feed a massive global population. However, research suggests the efficiency of food production comes at the cost of robustness. Nature’s biodiversity has floundered under these highly productive, uniform landscapes.
Diverse forests and pastures have been replaced with vast monocultures of fast-growing, short-lived food crops. In oceans and freshwater bodies, larger fish species are harvested, leaving behind smaller, faster-growing species.
Nature is a highly interconnected system, where actions in one domain ripple outward, impacting species across vast landscapes and seascapes. Our new study shows that the consequences of agricultural and fishing practices extend far beyond fields, farms and fishing grounds, changing the biodiversity and stability of entire regions.
Costs of global food productivity
Our recent paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution reviewed hundreds of studies to show how humanity’s drive for increased food production has fundamentally altered ecosystem biostructure — the intricate tapestry of species interactions and energy flows that underpins ecosystems. In doing so, it has resulted in significant biodiversity loss.
The pursuit of global food productivity has also led to the homogenization of landscapes, replacing once-complex food webs with greatly simplified food webs.
On land, this simplification comes from the vast monocultures that have replaced habitats and ecosystems. In water, selective harvesting and resource extraction methods like trawling have severely disturbed bottom sediment, a macro-habitat that vast amounts of species require to survive.
Resource extraction methods like trawling have severely disturbed oceanic habitats.
(Shutterstock)
Most global food production occurs in naturally productive regions, which are often biodiversity hotspots. As a result, biodiversity losses from food production are concentrated in these ecologically vital areas.
The Great Lakes region in North America is one such area, where northern and southern species intersect and live within a vast area that connects to the great freshwater seas. This area is also transiently home to millions of migratory birds.
When addressing biodiversity loss through policy measures, such as COP15’s 30×30 target that calls for conserving 30 per cent of land and sea areas by 2030, policymakers must also prioritize restoring the biodiversity hotspots that have already been impacted.
Learning from nature
We need a fundamental shift in how we produce food — one that recognizes that food production efficiency comes at the cost of ecosystem robustness and the loss of biodiversity. Policymakers must find novel ways to maintain food production while ensuring adaptive capacity in our ecosystems.
By mimicking nature’s complex mosaic of habitats, we can strengthen the resilience of food webs. By doing so, we can buffer them against environmental variability and enhance activities vital to ecosystems such as pollination, soil carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling.
A farmer harvests a soy crop in Levis, Que., Sept. 24, 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot
In agriculture systems, this approach would require reintroducing heterogeneity into agriculture through intercropping (growing multiple crops at once), perennial polycultures and crop rotations. It would also involve restoring marginal land — land of little agricultural value — with native prairies, hedgerows, wooded islands, riparian buffers (a vegetated area along a stream or riverbank) and wetlands.
But rather than focusing just on individual fields, regenerative agriculture should look at the landscape level with the goal of designing more complex habitats.
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Similarly, in aquatic realms, fisheries managers need to look beyond the yields of target fisheries. They must adopt ecosystem-based management strategies that prioritize system-level resilience.
For example, stocking salmon for a sport fishery can subsidize predators (like salmon) that severely reduce or eliminate native prey species (like cisco) in the natural environment.
This would be a significant departure from the current strategy of many fisheries, which focuses on maximum sustainable yield of single species. However, with increasing climate variability, the resilience of these highly perturbed systems will be tested and could be found wanting.
Bringing the vision to life
While undertaking a shift of this magnitude is daunting, the rewards will be profound. By reimagining our landscapes as large-scale management and conservation initiatives, we can address multiple environmental challenges, from biodiversity loss and nutrient pollution to carbon sequestration and flood mitigation.
As an example, restoring wetlands can enhance biodiversity, serve as significant carbon sinks, aid in agricultural and urban flood control and mitigate excessive nutrients that fuel harmful algal blooms and dead zones — problems exacerbated by climate change.
Realizing this vision will require the collaborative effort of government agencies like the Canadian Water Agency, Indigenous groups, ecologists, engineers, hydrologists and other stakeholders to design and implement solutions tailored to the unique characteristics of each region.
This approach integrates already-existing holistic Indigenous knowledge perspectives that have accumulated over generations of stewardship with the latest scientific insights, creating a comprehensive framework for sustainable food production and ecosystem protection. Läs mer…