Abstract

Agricultural intensification increased crop productivity but simplified production with lower diversity of cropping systems, higher genetic uniformity, and a higher uniformity of agricultural landscapes. Associated detrimental effects on the environment and biodiversity as well as the resilience and adaptability of cropping systems to climate change are of growing concern. Crop diversification may stabilize productivity of cropping systems and reduce negative environmental impacts and loss of biodiversity, but a shared understanding of crop diversification including approaches towards a more systematic research is lacking. Here, we review the use of 'crop diversification' measures in agricultural research. We (i) analyse changes in crop diversification studies over time; (ii) identify diversification practices based on empirical studies; (iii) differentiate their use by country, crop species and experimental setup and (iv) identify target parameters to assess the success of diversification. Our main findings are that (1) less than 5% of the selected studies on crop diversification refer to our search term 'diversification'; (2) more than half of the studies focused on rice, corn or wheat; (3) 76% of the experiments were conducted in India, USA, Canada, Brazil or China; (4) almost any arable crop was tested on its suitability for diversification; (5) in 72% of the studies on crop diversification, at least one additional agronomic measure was tested and (6) only 45% of the studies analysed agronomic, economic and ecological target variables. Our findings show the high variability of approaches to crop diversification and the lack of a consistent theoretical concept. For better comparability and ability to generalise the results of the different primary studies, we suggest a novel conceptual framework. It consists of five elements, (i) definition of the problem of existing farming practices and the potential need for diversification, (ii) characterisation of the baseline system to be diversified, (iii) definition of the scale and target area, (iv) description of the experimental design and target variables and (v) definition of the expected impacts. Applying this framework will contribute to utilizing the benefits of crop diversification more efficiently.

Keywords

Cropping systems; Cultivation method; Diversity; Experiments; Resilience; Simplification; Specialisation

Published in

Agronomy for Sustainable Development
2020, Volume: 40, number: 2, article number: 14
Publisher: SPRINGER FRANCE

SLU Authors

• Reckling, Moritz

  • Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
SDG2 End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture


UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-020-00617-4

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/105596